LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. #1 



TD..S..M... 4 



|| UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. J 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



THE 



CITIES OF THE PAST. 



BY 

FRANCES POWER COBBE. 

If 




LONDON : 

TEUBNEE & CO., 60, PATEENOSTEE EOW. 
1864. 



LONDON : 

WILLIAM STEVENS, PRINTER, 37. BELL YARD, 
TEMPLE BAR. 



CONTENTS, 



Page 

I. The City of the Sun (Baalbec) . . 1 

II. The City of Yictoey (Cairo) ... 36 
III. The Eternal City (in a temporary phase) 

(Rome in the Carnival) .... 71 

IY. A Day at the Dead Sea (Jericho, &c.) . 107 

V. A Day at Athens 139 

YI. The City of Peace (Jerusalem) . . . 168 



PREFACE. 



The present volume contains a series of sketches 
recording the author's impressions de voyage during 
a solitary pilgrimage to the East. Originally 
published in Fraser's Magazine, they have been 
collected and reprinted in the hope that, how- 
ever familiar to us may have become " The Cities 
of the Past," the interest can never be wholly 
exhausted which lingers around Baalbec and 
Athens, Rome, Cairo, and Jerusalem. 



Florence, December, 1863. 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



THE CITY OF THE SUN". 

Many of us have learned in our day how good it is to 
turn our steps out of this crowded, dusty Europe, far 
away to the calm old lands of the East. Here, indeed, 
is our real life in the great throbbing heart of the world ; 
here in our own England, where the cloud rests over the 
"million-peopled city," fitly as over the battle-field of 
humanity. Here are our cares, our labours, our soaring, 
struggling hopes, our keen, sharp joys, our solemn 
duties. 'Tis a poor choice to give up England in our 
manhood, and abandon for ever all its purpose and its 
noble strife for the lotos-eater life of the South. At 
this hour, when every voice and every arm are needed 
to grapple with error, and want, and sin — when it is 
not one course only of effort which we would pursue, but 
a hundred lives of labour we would fain be allowed to 
live at once, if so we might do somewhat for the Eight 
and the True, — it is, I say, a pitiful thing to quit the 
field and wander away to dream, and gaze, and ponder; 
and live, as perhaps man may have earned the right to 
live in centuries to come, when Giant Despair and Giant 
Sin are dead, and " righteousness and peace shall kiss 



2 



THE CITIES 0E THE PAST. 



each other.' ' Yet even now, for a time, for a passing 
experience, there is nothing better for us than to cool 
our fevered lips in the waters of old Nile, and wash 
our wearied eyes in Jordan. We see this life in a new 
aspect from that different world, and we return to it 
with other thoughts. The baser part of its ambitions, 
the cumbrous paraphernalia of its luxuries and its forms, 
look poor, and childish, and vulgar, when we remember 
them as we sit under the shadows of ruined empires, or 
learn in the free life of tents with how few and how 
simple things can all our multitudinous wants be sup- 
plied. A voyage to the East from Europe is like 
escaping from some noisy, contentious assembly, with 
its glaring gaslights and suffocating air, and finding 
ourselves suddenly in the cool fresh summer morning, 
with the soft mists still lying around us, and Lucifer 
yet shining serenely in the pale blue sky. Das Mor gen- 
land it is, in very truth ; and the morning of our own 
lives comes back to us there in the same mysterious way 
as when we hear the half -remembered notes of our 
mother's songs, or, burying our faces in the moss and 
grass, inhale "the field-smells known in infancy." 

There is no possibility of conveying such impressions 
as these in written words or painted landscapes. The 
inspiration evaporates as in a translated poem ; so far as 
it can be done, many beautiful books have already 
accomplished it. After JEothen, and The Crescent and 
the Cross, and Eastern Life, who needs further descrip- 
tion of Syria and Egypt ? Let the reader exculpate me 
from any such presumption as the attempt to supply 
a better representation than these. Only as we are 



THE CITY OE THE SUN". 



3 



told that no landscape has ever been twice beheld 
alike by mortal eyes, but that grass and trees, and 
sunlight and shifting clouds, are for ever varying the 
scene, so I would offer one more glance at those bright 
lands reflected in another human soul. He who cannot 
himself wander 

To a region far away, 
On from island nnto island, at the gateways of the day, 

may be content to spend an hour, in thought, at least, 
in the " shining Orient" with one companion more. 
Be the ride over old Lebanon dull or otherwise, he 
will return from it all the fresher to England. 

In the course of a somewhat adventurous solitary 
pilgrimage to the East, I found myself three years ago 
in the singular locanda, a mile from Beyrouth, whose 
beauty of situation is so vividly depicted by poor Eliot 
Warburton. I had landed at this point from Jaffa, after 
a visit to Palestine, hoping to find some party of tra- 
vellers proceeding to Eaalbec and willing to admit me 
into their caravan. Barely does an Englishwoman fail 
in any corner of the world to find her countrymen and 
women obeying the instincts of their Viking ancestors, 
and going up and down upon the earth like another 
" roaring lion " beside the British king of beasts ! We 
ask an Italian, or a French or German woman, whom 
we meet by chance straying from the " fatherland " 
into some neighbouring country, " Does Madame travel 
for health or pleasure?" We ask an English lady by 
her own fireside, "What on earth keeps you at home 
this year?" It is almost too much, this Anglicizing 
of the world. Under the vast shade of Cheops, as I 

b 2 



4 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



rode up in solemn thought, it was startling to be ad- 
dressed by some kindly unknown compatriot, " "Would 
you like to join our lunch, ma'am? Here is some 
capital Bass's ale !" Eeclining in our tent in Hebron, 
within a few stones' -throw of the grave of Abraham, it 
was mortifying to find our Druse dragoman serve our 
evening meal on willow-pattern plates ! But, for all 
the absurd associations such nationalities produce, I 
envy not him who could make a great journey in our 
day, and not come back proud and thankful to belong 
to our Saxon race. The trust in our word, the respect 
for our courage (assumed even in a woman), the belief 
in the steadfastness of our resolution, is something that 
does one good to meet. I know not that I did not like, 
as much as any compliment I ever heard, the remark of 
a poor Italian cameriera, "Si dice sempre, 'Pulito come 
gli Inglesi' " (We always say, Clean as the English). 

Ill-luck (or perhaps special good-luck) ruled that I 
should find nobody at Beyrouth, English or otherwise, 
intending to go to Baalbec at the time of my visit. I 
remained, therefore, a few days at the hotel, waiting to 
decide what I should do, and enjoying delightful soli- 
tary walks across the little triangular peninsula whose 
base is Lebanon and whose apex extends seven or eight 
miles into the blue Levant, a little way north of Tyre. 
One morning I remember having strolled through the 
gardens of mulberry and almond, kindly guided every- 
where by the courteous peasants, till at last I sat down 
to read close over the sea, which broke with its delicate 
fringe of foam on the low rocks below. Overhead an 
immense hedge of cactus sheltered me from the warm 
spring sun ; while to the right rose up the glorious 



THE CITY OP THE STJN". 



5 



Lebanon, with his feet in the sea and his snowy 
crown towering over the fir woods up into the 
intense blue sky. I took out the little " Shelley" 
which I had loved to read in the green old woods 
of the home of my youth ; but nature was unrolling 
a poem before me more wondrous than the Prome- 
theus, more balmy than the Sensitive Plant, and I could 
only gaze, and dream, and be thankful. Presently 
there came by a young mother, with a little girl running 
beside her, and a baby of a year old in her arms. 
Like nearly all the Syrian women, she had a sweet, soft 
face, and the lithesome figure and pretty colours of the 
graceful dress made her a charming picture. I touched 
my breast and head, of course, with the usual salu- 
tation, " Salaam aleik!" (Peace be with you!) and 
received the fitting reply, " Aleik salaam !" and I sup- 
pose I looked at the little child as mothers like their 
infants to be looked at, for, without a word or a hesita- 
tion, she placed the little fellow in my lap, and then, in 
the gentle Eastern fashion, seated herself silently close 
beside me. We talked a long while, if talking it could 
be called, when signs and smiles and my dozen words 
of Arabic had to do all the duty ; and then she rose 
and kissed my hand, and passed away down the shore, 
singing some sweet monotonous song. " Good-bye !" 
I thught, " pretty Amina, and dear little Mustapha — 
we shall not meet again ; but your ready claim of 
human relationship has done my heart good, and will 
not soon be forgotten." 

When it became evident that I should find no com- 
panions to Baalbec, I was obliged to resolve for myself 



6 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



the problem, Should I venture on the journey alone ? 
and, having obtained from our kind consul the recom- 
mendation of a trustworthy old Turk as a dragoman, I 
did not long hesitate. It was a lovely soft morning in 
March as we rode out of Beyrouth, Hassan and I, on 
our good Syrian steeds, and the muleteer on foot beside 
his beast, laden with all my worldly concerns — for 
that blessed week, at all events. My tent, my kitchen, 
my cooking and eating utensils, my food and drink, 
my bed and bedding, and table, and stool, my bath and 
carpet-bag, and leather travelling-case, — all the things 
with which we crowd so many rooms dwindled to the 
burden of a single mule. Springing on my English 
side-saddle, and riding quickly out of the entangled 
mass of filthy alleys which forms " the rising emporium 
of Beyrouth,' ' I inhaled with ecstasy the perfumed air 
of the orange and almond groves outside the town, and 
gloried in the prospect of another week of the free life 
of tents ; Lebanon before me and Baalbec beyond ! 
Baalbec ! the name alone seemed teeming with sublime 
mysteries. Miss Martineau says that, when she was a 
school-girl, she had " taken on herself to despise Baal" 
but that he appeared a very different personage in his 
own magnificent Heliopolis ! For me the old forms of 
heathenism had long possessed a strong fascination. 
Amid all their hideous aberrations, their gross pollu- 
tions, I had delighted to find traces of the " light 
which lighteth every man that cometh into the world," 
the " law written on the hearts" of those who knew not 
Moses. Highest of these ancient faiths, of course in 
moral purity, stands the Persian fire-worship ; and far 

11.'.- ' • ■ jSm 



THE CITY OF THE SOT. 



7 



may we look, save in the Hebrew writings, for grander 
thoughts or more spiritual prayers than those of the 
Zend Avesta. 

" Hurt not thy neighbour ; be not wrathful ; do not 
evil from shame. Fall not into avarice, nor violence, 
nor envy, nor pride. Answer gently thine enemy." 
"The procrastination of a good action is a sin." 
" There are those who love not to give. The place 
which awaits them is below." " Oh, Thou who 
dwellest in primaeval light, glory, happiness, and intel- 
ligence — absolute master of all excellent, and pure, and 
holy beings, Ormusd, Lord of Light in heaven, make me 
perfect ! Give me a holiness which nothing can shake, 
in my actions and my words ; give me the power to do 
that good which I desire." " I pray thee, oh Ormusd, 
that the wicked become believers, that they be hence- 
forth without sin." " I believe in God and in His law. 
Hell shall be destroyed at the resurrection. I am 
resolved to do right. Come to my help, oh Ormusd !" 
— (Jesehts Sade, Vendidad Sade, and Patets from the 
Zend Avesta, translated by Du Perron). In what de- 
gree this high Persian faith (still existing in no ignoble 
type among the Parsees of India) was connected with 
the sun-worship of the gross Phoenician mythology, it is 
hard to conjecture. Perhaps there was no relation at 
all, and Baal (or Bel), the sun-god, never received in 
his impure fanes the homage of a true worshipper of 
Ormusd, " the supremely wise Lord," of whom the Zend 
Avesta only tells us " his light is hidden under all that 
shines." At least the faith of which Heliogabalus was 
hierophant had fallen as low as ever the religious senti- 



8 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



ment of human nature may be debased. Yet does the 
" golden star," Zoroaster, throw a mysterious halo over 
the fire-worship of East and West; that faith which 
blazed out in the Eactrian plains before the dawn of 
history, and which lights yet its memorial fires each 
midsummer eve in the vales of Christian Scotland and 
Ireland. 

To return to my journey. 

Nothing can be conceived more delicious than the 
odours of these lower slopes of Lebanon. I do not 
know the name of half the trees and plants flowering 
round the path, some with pungent aromatic perfumes, 
others luscious, like the orange blossoms ; and then, 
again, clumps of odoriferous pines, wild and pure, and 
under them growing the dwarf lavender in the crevices 
of the rocks. We hardly guess, I think, how much of 
our enjoyment of summer, in every climate, comes from 
the gratification of our sense of smell, not only from the 
recognised perfume of special flowers, but the united 
fragrance of all the vegetation around us, and of the 
ground itself when freshened by rain or tillage. The 
sweetness of the violet in spring is, as Shelley says, 
Mixed with fresli odour sent 

From the turf, like the voice and the instrument, 
and a music more subtle than that of sound steals into 
our hearts. It must have happened to us all, sometimes, 
I suppose, to have been startled by the vividness of 
some feelings thus derived, some sense of sudden joy, 
some grasp of happy memory of the love which blessed 
our childhood, some aspiration of heaven breathing 
through the cares of earth. "What has happened to us ? 



THE CITY OP THE STTST. 



9 



Only that we have passed near a jessamine or a honey- 
suckle, or driven past a hawthorn hedge, or ridden 
under a few fir-trees on the hill-side. And He, to 
whom the world is u as the dust in the balance" in the 
immensity of His universe, He has fitted those flowers 
and trees to yield that fragrance to our senses, fitted 
our brain and heart to receive from it those softening 
influences ! Methinks, if there were no other proofs in 
the world of God's goodness, the flowers would supply 
them in abundance. Answer it to thyself, poor soul, 
that doubtest of His love, that darest not trust the voice 
in thine own heart telling thee that thy Father in 
heaven is all which that heart can adore. Why has He 
made these flowers ? why does He send to thee these 
little joys, as gentle and unnoticed often as a mother's 
kiss upon a sleeping child? There is not, it would 
seem, a conceivable reason to be given for the existence 
of flowers (at least for their beauty and perfume), other 
than the intention to provide for man a pure and most 
delicate pleasure. Geologists tell us that in the earlier 
epochs there are few traces of flowers ; such as there 
were being small, and probably of the secondary 
colours, mere vessels for the ripening of the seeds. Only 
when the human era approached, the order of the 
rosacese appeared, the fruit-trees with their luxurious 
burdens, and all our brightest and sweetest flowers, till 
u the wilderness rejoiced and blossomed as the rose." 
Thus, as the coal, and the iron, and the stone were laid 
up in the dawn of time for our use to-day, so the flowers 
sprang up over the earth for our delight, and to deck the 
cradle God had prepared for his child ! The incense in 



10 



THE CITIES 0E THE PAST. 



the churches of the Greek and Latin communion does 
not fail to awaken holy thoughts in those who have 
associated it with their earliest worship and purest de- 
votion. A pitiful thing is it that God's own censers of 
the flowers should ever open before us without some 
happy and tender thoughts of Him who has made them 

Spring from every spot of earth 

To show His love is there. 
As I ascended slowly up the giant staircase of hills 
piled on one another, the scene became more and more 
beautiful, and the vast expanse of the sea below seemed 
marvellous. I could scarcely believe that the line which 
divided the sky half-way from the zenith was that of 
the horizon. On the spot where my tent was pitched 
for the night I could still see the promontory of the old 
Eerytus, while a wilderness of verdant slopes and huge 
spurs of the mountains lay between. The pine-trees, 
fringing the far-off summits to the west, stood out for 
awhile against the evening sky, and the valleys grew 
slowly grey and dim ; and then, after a little time, the 
lights twinkled here and there in the Maronite villages 
in the hollows of the great hills, and high up in the 
convents perched on the snowy summits, and the stars 
came out in the radiance of the Syrian heavens, and 
Orion strode over Lebanon. 

Regretfully I turned at last for the night to my little 
tent, just large enough for my bed and table, and stool 
and bath. Close by was the picturesque "Khan," an 
open shed, where Hassan and the muleteer slept, and 
where, as usual, we found a man to supply us with 
a fowl and eggs, and delicious fresh water. These 



THE CITY OF THE SUN. 



11 



" Khans " give us Europeans a strange idea of the 
nations which from immemorial time have erected and 
preserved such harbours of refuge open to every way- 
farer at scarcely above an hour's journey from each 
other ; and yet, while providing the inns, have never 
dreamed of forming roads, even in the rudest and sim- 
plest manner. I had asked my Piedmontese dragoman 
Abengo, riding out of Jerusalem near Colonia, 

"Why do not the people throw these shocking 
boulders off the roads ? " 

" Off the road, Signora? They always throw them 
on it, and off their fields . ' ' 

"But has the government nothing to say in the 
matter ?" 

"II governo ? Cosa sia il governo, qui, Signora ? " 

My tent was, of course, close to the mule-track which 
passed the Khan, and formed the regular highway from 
Beyrouth to Damascus. I had not been long asleep on 
my little gridiron of a bed before I was awakened by 
the arrival of a caravan with mules tumbling over the 
tent-pegs, and a general hubbub and chattering of 
Arabic. It was not very pleasant; but courage had 
come in my long wanderings, and neither that nor many 
subsequent similar disturbances prevented me from rest. 
"We rose early next morning, and breakfasted before 
dawn, not too luxuriously, in the chill drizzle, while 
my tent was struck and placed on the mule, and our 
horses saddled. Eeader, do not envy that luxurious 
meal — shocking bread (dry, of course), two eggs, and a 
cup of tea, without milk, in a tin cup, which possessed a 
peculiar flavour of its own, contracted (I could not but 



12 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



surmise) from being used as the receptacle of Hassan's 
private store of onions ! Soon I was on a beautiful 
young chestnut, which the poor old fellow had designed 
for his own especial delight, and in a few hours we 
were scrambling up such snowy heights as put both 
the horse's mettle and mine to the test. Nothing can be 
conceived more unlike what we call a road than these 
tracks over Lebanon, to which the worst of Alpine 
passes ever used for mules or horses is a joke. My 
journey chanced to be at an unlucky moment, when the 
snows were beginning to melt, but the good summer 
passes still quite unattainable. Frequently the bed of 
a torrent formed our path ; and, scrambling on foot over 
the adjacent heights, I watched with amazement the 
horses driven by Hassan up actual cataracts, with rocks 
as high as their breasts, the fine animals clambering up 
them like so many cats in the midst of the roar and 
rush of the waters. On one occasion, when we had 
been making an ill-advised short cut, Hassan informed 
me there was nothing for us but to descend a certain 
tremendous declivity, on which the untracked snow lay 
thick, and whereon (as there was no track at all down 
that hill-side) it was impossible to guess into what 
hollows our horses might fall. At the bottom there was 
a sharp ledge and precipice, on which the snow could 
not lie, falling sheer into a deep valley below. The 
affair was to make our horses go down to the ledge, and 
there turn short, and ride along the edge till we could 
descend more safely. Down we went in a moment up 
to the horses' knees, and then, according to the irregu- 
lar rocks under us, to the girths, the poor brutes floun- 



THE CITY OE THE SUN* 



13 



dering on, and the steep declivity forcing them, help- 
lessly tumbling forward, till in a few moments we were 
on the ledge over the precipice. The impetus with 
which we had descended, added to my weight, rendered 
it apparently impossible for my horse to stop himself. 
The fine young creature knew his own danger, how- 
ever, and, as we hung for a seconds on the edge, his 
struggles were frantic. 

The grandeur of the scene in some of these defiles is 
indescribable. It does not in the least partake of the 
Alpine character, having no pointed " aiguilles " or 
celestial "Jungfraus" rising up over the clouds into 
the blue heaven like a glorified soul — a Virgin in an 
Assumption of Gruido. Lebanon is an aged, hoary 
saint with giant limbs, kneeling upon earth. The 
rounded hills, the hollow cones, are all on an enormous 
scale. The desolation of the barren heights and the 
luxuriant verdure of the valleys surpass everything in 
Europe. Sometimes in the heart of the great moun- 
tains a chasm opens deep and dark as into the mouth of 
hell, or as the glimpses we gain in God-illumined hours 
into the abysses of our own sinful souls. And, lo ! the 
path winds down into the pit where, it would seem, no 
foot could tread, and the sunlight is blotted out, and we 
go deeper and deeper, with not a shrub or blade of 
grass over the barren cliffs, till, in the crevices of the 
rocks, we suddenly find the sweet wild hyacinth and 
the lovely white lily of Palestine, Christ's chosen token 
of the Father's love. 

After many long hours of alternate mounting and 
descending of these hills and vales, the traveller obtains 



14 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



a sight of the Vale of Baalbec, lying like a vast green 
lake between him and the parallel chain of Anti- 
Lebanon. The effect is very singular, the plain being 
nearly flat, and the verdure of its fields contrasting with 
the cliffs of the mountains, which are of a red and even 
crimson hue, while the summits are of glittering snow. 

To confess the truth, this Valley of the Haraun had 
no small share in luring me to my present adventure. 
There had been a time when I had read Paradise and 
the Peri with all a child's limitless delight, and still I 
remembered every word of it by heart, and felt perhaps 
far too little grown beyond the longing, which had once 
brought many a tear, to say, like the spirit ascending 
from that flowery plain 

Joy, joy for ever, my task is done, 

The gates are passed, and Heaven is won. 

"When shall we all shake off this effeminate yearning for 
peace and bliss, and know that it ought to be 

Life, not Death, for which we pant ; 

More life, and fuller, that we want ? 

More life to be, to do, to suffer all that is allotted to us 
here in this world, where there is larger space for all 
good and holy things than we shall ever fill ? The 
teaching of the miserable theology of the last century 
infects us still, though there are signs on every hand 
that we are outgrowing it. The doctrine which Paley 
taught so lucidly, that " Virtue consists in doing right, 
for the sale of everlasting felicity" is perhaps rarely 
preached now in all the effrontery of its baseness. Yet 
we go on most of us mixing up such hopes with more 
disinterested motives, and in the depths of our hearts 



THE CITY OF THE SUN". 



15 



longing, not for more work to do and more power to 
do it to serve God and man, but for mere rest, or poor 
paltry happiness. Few of us could die as Theodore 
Parker did last year (worn out in the prime of manhood 
by his enormous labours in the cause of Abolition), 
saying, as he did to me, " Of course I do not fear to 
die, but I would fain have finished my work. I had 
great powers committed to me, and I have but half 
used them." This is the right spirit ; not our indolent 
sighings for paradise and repose. 

Only to one class of human beings, I believe, is 
it well to speak much of heaven. To those among us 
whose lot is mainly a happy one, the sense of immor- 
tality is fitly placed in the background of consciousness, 
to give this life's trials an importance they could not 
retain were we able always to view them from the 
" Delectable Mountains/ 5 whence heaven seems so near; 
and it is not to be desired for us that we should force 
this consciousness into more vivid prominence. But, to 
our unhappy brothers and sisters whose earthly lives 
are steeped in vice and squalor, whose homes are the 
crowded lodging-rooms of hideous lanes, where the 
moral atmosphere and the natural air are alike tainted 
by the foulest filth and sin, there is need that we should 
speak of another life. "We need to tell them that these 
sordid courts and reeking alleys are not all our beautiful 
world, that there are other flowers growing in wood 
and field than those they see sickening in the pollution 
of their gin palaces ; and, above all, that there is 

A great world of light that lies 
Behind all human destinies, 



16 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



in whose dawning radiance the most sordid existence 
may be glorified even now. 

Tt was rather a sad disenchantment from the visions 
which Paradise and the Peri had awakened which 
awaited me. As we approached the valley of Baalbec 
late in the day, after eight or nine hours' hard riding, 
I found myself constantly repeating 

Now over Syria's land of roses 
Softly the light of eve reposes, 
And like a glory the broad sun 
Hangs over sainted Lebanon, 
Whose head in wintry grandeur towers 
And whitens with eternal sleet, 
While summer, in a vale of flowers, 
Is sleeping rosy at his feet. 

Alas ! nothing could be much less like a vale of flowers 
than it was at the moment of my visit. The corn 
was just sprouting, but spring had not begun, and the 
contrast to the carpeted fields of Palestine, glowing with 
lilies, and tulips, and the yellow stars of Bethlehem, 
and fields of the red "tears of Christ," struck a chill 
to my anticipations. How quickly does scepticism set 
in ! I began immediately to press my audacious doubts 
to the most frightful lengths ; were there actually such 
creatures as Peris at all ? I explained the query to 
poor Hassan. Had he heard of Peris ? Were there any 
such beings ? 

" Commande, Signora? Cosa sono Peris ? " 

" A sort of Djinns, Hassan, who live on nothing but 
perfumes, and were turned out of paradise." 

" Oh, yes! there were all sorts of Djinns. The 



THE CITY OF THE STJN. 



17 



Signora will wait till we come to Eaalbec ; there she 
will see the stones placed by the Djinns in the temples 
of the idols. None but Djinns could have placed them, 
they are so large." 

"Hassan, I intend to ha^ve my tent pitched among 
the ruins. There is shelter among them, I suppose, for 
you and the muleteer ? " 

" 0, Signora mia ! it is quite out of question. Im- 
possibile ! impossibile ! There are great black vaults ; 
Djinns built them; Djinns are always going about 
Baalbec. I will show the Signora a nice clean locanda 
outside the ruins where they wash every day. That 
will suit the Signora. Eut Eaalbec ! oh no, no, le 
rovine ! demonij ! Djinns! " 

"Eut men built those ruins, I assure you, Hassan. 
I have read a book written at the time when men still 
made such temples (it was needless to name Vitruvius), 
in which the whole method of raising those huge stones 
is described." 

The Turkish incredulity evinced at this information 
instantly carried me back in memory to a scene in the 
pleasant Northern Hay at Exeter, whither I had chanced 
to stray during a brief sojourn in the charming old city. 
I had been labouring to convince a group of poor women 
at work under a tree that it was not (as they averred) a 
Planet which drove the unfortunate culprits into the 
neighbouring gaol, but that planets were vast worlds 
rolling through that summer evening sky over our heads, 
leaving quite untrammelled the freedom of man to pick 
— or not to pick — pockets. " Them as reads books," 
replied the spokeswoman, taking the sense of the 

c 



13 



THE CITIES OP THE PAST. 



meeting with a glance, and summing up the case 
(literally) from the Bench, "them as reads books learns 
many things, but we know it is a Planet as sends them 
to gaol ! " 

It is very droll to see the way in which a true Oriental 
treats English ideas ; the quiet superiority with which 
he smiles at our enthusiasm about old walls and old 
stories of idolaters whose souls are in Jehanum, and the 
ridiculous state of fuss we display to jump up from our 
meals, and go on hither and thither, instead of sitting 
the rest of the day calm and cross-legged, enjoying 
tobacco and existence. Hassan was a kind old fellow, 
as considerate of my comfort as his comprehension of 
an English lady's requirements permitted. But his 
stoicism quite put me to the blush when I mentioned 
such trifles as that the iron (in my stirrup) was entering 
into my sole, and that the absence of a bar in my gridiron 
bed did not increase its suitability for repose. When- 
ever I was in particular perplexity concerning the awful 
precipices we were descending, and looked for Hassan's 
aid to force my horse to attempt them, to a certainty I 
saw him placidly rolling up a pinch of Latakia into a 
cigarette, striking his light, and proceeding uncon- 
cernedly with a quiet response to my appeal : " Venga, 
Signora, non c'e pericolo." At last we reached the level 
plain through cataracts of melting snow. It was very 
cold, very bleak, very dismal. Eo signs of a Peri any- 
where. Coming up to a small ruined building I inquired, 
" Is that an Imaret, Hassan ? " 

"I don't know what an Imaret is, Signora." 

It was disheartening ! The mule was far behind ; so 



THE CITY OF THE SUis T . 



19 



we rested beside the brook which I had hoped might 
have been the " small Imaret's rustic fount and some 
Maronite women coming up, I began to sketch them, 
and was soon surrounded by a merry group. Two hours 
more brought us to the large village of Zachly. 

The houses are all of mud, with flat roofs made of 
branches, and covered by another coating of mud. In- 
side they are mostly supported by the stem of a tree in 
the middle, and are divided into two or three chambers. 
Along the walls on shelves are ranged rows of tin 
vessels just as in our cottages ; and in the corners of 
several I saw wonderfully elaborate iron grates. A 
recess in the wall contains piles of mats and the hard 
cushions of raw cotton, which form alike chairs, sofas, 
and beds. The rough unplaned door, with its wooden 
lock, and the window half stuffed up, reminded me of 
an Irish cabin — a similitude much enhanced by the 
abundant population of fowls, cats, and dogs, and, above 
all, of lovely rosy little children. We stopped outside 
the first tolerable habitation, and asked leave of the 
owners to pitch my tent in the angle of grass outside it. 
I was more than welcome. In five minutes, while 
Hassan was arranging the tent, I had a perfect court of 
the poor simple creatures gathering round me, kissing 
my hands, saying soft kindly words, and giving me 
their only luxuries, daffodils and sweet carrots. One 
pleasant-faced old woman, having found my hands 
apparently to her taste, proceeded to put her arms round 
my neck, and kiss and bless me in the most motherly 
way. I wondered whether the poor soul might have 
had a daughter of whom I reminded her, for she seemed 

c 2 



20 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



much affected in some unexplained manner. To amuse 
them I showed them the contents of my travelling-bag, 
writing and dressing and luncheon apparatus, each new 
object calling forth ecstasies of wonder and delight, and 
screams of " Taib ! Ta'ib katiyeh" (good! very good) ; 
and the smell of eau-de-cologne and toilet-vinegar, and 
taste of biscuits and bits of sugar, appearing to surpass 
all experience of earthly luxuries. My little rough 
sketch-book was hardly comprehensible till I began to 
draw the children, and there was much amusement, and 
many undeserved "Ta'ibs;" and then they each told 
me their names, which I wrote down in the order fol- 
lowing : — 

First, my hostess, a beautiful young woman, with 
soft, bright colour, and kindly brown eyes. Her name, 
and that of her dear little child, who could not be kept 
from running up every five minutes and giving me a 
shy pat on the knee, was " Helena." When I made 
her understand it was a name dear to me she showed 
her pleasure very prettily. Then came, as they sat in 
the circle on the ground or stood behind it, Mareen, and 
"Wardeya, and Yasmeen (Jessamine), and Myrrhi, and 
Yussef, and Raehayl, and Maddalena, and Maroon, and 
Patme, and another Yussef, and Boalee, and Georgi, 
and Aida, and Malachee, and Dieb, and Mddy, and 
Barbara (pronounced with the middle "a" intensely 
broad), and Papas Salieh, the priest. This last was a 
noble-looking young man, with high cylindrical black 
cap and black robe, and long flowing brown hair. 
When it was explained to me he was the priest (as I of 
course recognised at first), I made him a respectful 



THE CITY OF THE SOT. 



21 



salutation, whereat lie was highly pleased, and showed 
me afterwards all the kindness in his power. 

Having finished my dinner, and given bits of sugar 
to the children, and bones to the respectable dog of the 
establishment, who thenceforth constituted himself the 
sentry over my camp (of one), I retired into private life 
by a general salaam and " kataherib " (thank you), and 
closed my tent-door for the night ; not, however, from 
public gaze could I retire so easily. I had just wound 
my watch, and prepared for further steps towards re- 
pose, when some faint sounds caused me to look up and 
round. Lo ! through the slit of the tent- door a whole 
perpendicular row of bright laughing girls' eyes were 
peering at me ; while Master Mddy and Miss Amina, 
and sundry other small imps, were extended on the 
ground, poking their funny little hands under the fringe 
of the tent. Poor Niddy ! I had looked in vain for the 
stray " babe of Paradise,'' 

Among the rosy wild flowers playing, 
As rosy and as wild as they. 

Niddy was always playing with Hassan's cooking uten- 
sils, to the exasperation of that worthy, who finally 
gave him a push with the portable kitchen itself, whereby 
JNlddy was sent howling away. Pive minutes after- 
wards, however, he was peeping at me as comically as 
ever, and performing the most vivacious pantomime, 
whose moral was " Do give me another lump of sugar." 
To return, however, to my evening reception. When 
it became publicly known by the Court Circular of 
Zachly that I was actually going to bed, the anxiety of 
my female friends to inspect the mysteries of an English 



22 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



toilet became overpowering. One pretty girl pushed in 
resolutely through the slit with an offering of some raw 
carrots as a pleasing evening refreshment, and then a 
dozen followed. "La, la! Emshi! emshi ! salaam.' ' 
(JSTo, no ! Go away. Peace be with you!) It was of 
no sort of use. How did I comb and brush my hair ? 
Was it as long as theirs ? "What were the garments of 
u AnglissV The thirst for useless knowledge for a 
long time overcame all other considerations, till a vast 
amount of kissing had been performed on my hands and 
cheeks ; and finally, with many a soft word and bright 
smile, the pretty creatures took wing like a flock of 
pigeons. 

It rained that night and in the morning. Everything 
was damp in my tent, and the departure in the cold grey 
dawn was anything but pleasant, save for the kindly 
good-bye of the Maronites, quite astonished apparently 
at the receipt of a moderate backsheesh in return for their 
hospitality. I saw them again on my homeward jour- 
ney, and there obtained lodging in the house of Helena, 
the weather being terribly cold for tents. On that 
occasion I saw more of their simple patriarchal life, 
watched the baking of their miserable bread (mere meal 
pancakes, toasted for one minute in a red-hot earthen 
jar), and accompanied them to their vesper service in 
their own little chapel. As the sun went down over 
Lebanon the bell rang for prayers. We had only a few 
yards to walk to their small church, which seemed to 
be a sort of chapel- of- ease to the larger one, a mile off 
in the centre of Zachly. Imagine not, oh reader, that 
it is to a Bath or Cheltenham chapel-of-ease to which I 



THE CITY OF THE SUN. 



23 



was conducted, wherein to sit, in a crimson-cushioned 
pew, " under the Rev. Mr. So-and-so.' 9 A quadrangle 
of mud walls, brown without and whitewashed within, 
a flat roof of branches and mortar, a post for support in 
the centre, a confessional at one side, a little lectern, an 
altar without crucifix, and only decorated by two candle- 
sticks, a jar of fresh daffodils, some poor prints, and a 
blue tea-cup for sacramental plate, a little cottage-win- 
dow into which the setting sun was shining softly ; — 
such was the chapel of Zachly. A few men knelt to 
the left, a few women to the right ; in front of the altar 
was a group of children, also kneeling, and waiting to 
take their part in the service. At the lectern stood the 
noble figure of 3 r oung Papas Salieh, leaning on one of the 
crutches which in all Eastern churches are provided to 
relieve the fatigue of the attendants, who, like Abraham, 
" worship leaning on the top of a staff. 99 Besides the 
Papas stood a ragged but intelligent little acolyte, who 
chanted very well, and on the other side of the lectern 
was an aged peasant, who also took his part. The 
prayers were of course unintelligible to me, being in 
Arabic ; but I recognised in the Gospel the chapter of 
genealogies in Luke, over whose hard names the priest 
helped his friend quite unaffectedly. The reading over, 
Papas Salieh took off his black and red cap, and, kneeling 
before the altar, commenced another chanted prayer, 
while the women beside me bowed till they kissed the 
ground in Eastern prostration, beating their breasts so 
as quite to startle me. The group of children made the 
responses at intervals ; and then the priest blessed us, 
and the simple service was over, having occupied about 



24 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST* 



twenty minutes. "While we were departing, the Papas 
seated himself in the confessional, and a man went im- 
mediately into the penitent's place beside him. There 
was something very affecting to me in this poor little 
church of clay, with its humble efforts at cleanliness, 
and flowers, and music, all built and adorned by the 
worshippers' own hands, and served by the young 
peasant priest, doubtless the son and brother of some of 
his own flock. 

[These recollections were written originally in Greece, 
immediately after the little scenes to which they refer. 
As I prepare them now for the press, it is with a pang 
I retrace the memory of that innocent village, the gentle 
playful groups that gathered round me, the church 
where the stranger's heart ascended with theirs to the 
common Father of all, the humble cottage where I slept 
that last night, welcomed so kindly to the little room 
abandoned for my use, and left to rest with such soft 
kisses on my hands, and wishes for God's " peace" 
upon me. Alas, alas ! Zachly is now a heap of blackened 
ruins ; the cottage, the church, are doubtless crumbled 
to the ground, and the poor, humble people ! Heaven 
grant they may have escaped when the savage Druses 
overwhelmed their village, and that the sweet, motherly 
Helena, and her dear little children, and those bright 
girls, and Salieh, and the rest, may not have moistened 
with their blood the spot where I saw them so peaceful 
and so happy. At the best ; the condition of the Maronite 
fugitives is miserable to contemplate.] 

After leaving Zachly, I had to ride six hours before 
reaching Eaalbec. The plain was dreary, and the wind 



THE CITY OF THE STTjST. 



25 



piercingly cold ; but Baalbec was before me, and I could 
hardly master my impatience as I knew myself to be 
approaching the ruins with which I had always asso- 
ciated a mystery and a majesty beyond all others in the 
world. The very name of Baalbec for years back had 
stirred up in me all wildest imaginings of the sublime 
and the wonderful, and here I was within an hour 
of beholding it all. "Was it I in truth? Was that 
chain Lebanon, and that other mighty range before me 
Anti-Lebanon, and did the huge walls actually rise 
between me and that black hill to which Hassan was 
pointing ? At last it came. 
" Signora ! Ecco Baalbec !" 

A small rise in the plain had enabled us to see it some 
four miles off, a great block of castellated masonry (the 
Saracenic walls), out of which rose clearly, even at that 
distance, the six columns of the great Temple of the 
Sun, which still " stand sublime," 

Casting their shadows from on high, 
Like dials which the wizard Time 
Had raised to count his ages by. 

My heart beat with the pleasure we can only feel a 
few times in a life, and we sped onward as fast as our 
Syrian steeds would bear us. About two miles from 
the city itself, I was suddenly attracted by a singular 
building. It consisted of eight columns of beautiful 
polished red granite, but divested of their capitals, and 
surmounted by only a rude architrave of plain stones so 
as to form an octagon. One intercolumniation was filled 
by the usual Moslem niche, indicating the direction of 
the Kaaba. It was clear this was one of the common 



26 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



pieces of Arab architecture, wherein they plundered the 
materials of other temples to erect mosques for them- 
selves. There is something in this practice curiously 
akin to certain moral thievings and borrowings in their 
own and other sects. Mahomet himself had made of 
the traditional part of the creed of Arabia a mere patch- 
work, stolen from Jews and Christians. In our own 
time there are modern sects and churches which are 
constantly robbing from earlier faiths their prayers 
and rituals, maiming, and displacing, and barbarously 
building them into new forms, just as the Arabs did the 
blocks out of the temples of their predecessors. Surely 
such practices must ever mark the absence of the true 
inspiration alike of art and of religious sentiment ? It 
is at best a dead and negative creed, which does not 
blossom out spontaneously in its own appropriate cultus 
of prayer and praise, and with proper time and oppor- 
tunity in all the forms of Art, — architecture, and poetry, 
and painting, and music. I have heard a grand old 
liturgy mutilated and " improved" to suit the advanced 
theology of a people, till every feeling was pained as 
by false variations on some dear old tune • and after it 
the prayer of the preacher himself, poured out warm 
from his living heart, full of love and faith, seemed as if 
it belonged to another age than that of the liturgy ! It 
was as if one beheld growing together the luxuriant beech 
and chestnuts of our time, and the stern, dark old pines 
of the era of the coal measures ! The reformers of the 
world, it would seem, ought to proceed in a far different 
way. Surely they should take the spirit of all that in 
the past is true and holy, and leave the mere formal 



THE CITY OF THE SUN". 



27 



blocks of myth and cultus to lie where they have fallen ; 
never despised, never desecrated, only disused ; visited 
and studied with a sacred and tender interest, but not 
forced into unnatural service. We should follow the 
example of the Crusaders who saw the fanes of Cairo, 
and carried the idea of their grandeur into their own 
lands and their own faith, and built Bouen, and York, 
and Strasbourg, and Milan with the arches of the Gama 
Taloon and the mosque of Hassan.* 

Another half-hour and I was in the promised " lo- 
canda," in the village of Eaalbec — a large collection of 
mud cabins of the humblest sort, lying at some little 
distance from the ruins. My " apartment " was a 
separate cabin, consisting of one large whitewashed 
room, with a post in the middle and two vast apertures 
in the wall, scarcely to be called " windows, " inasmuch 
as they were wholly " without form and void," so far 
as shape or window frames were concerned. Hardly 
had I time to dismount and walk in, when a clean mat 
was thrown on the floor, and then a cotton mattress and 
a large pile of cushions, while a great hot " tandour" of 
charcoal was brought from an adjoining house and 
placed beside me. The luxury I felt in resting my 
stiffened and frozen limbs thus comfortably, made me 
draw an unfavourable comparison between chairs and 
divans, and also between fireplaces in our hotels, which 
take an hour before they begin to smoke, and the char- 
coal-pans of the South, which can be carried about ready 
lighted. 

* Both, erected several centuries before the pointed arch was 
used in Christendom. 



28 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



A little warmed and restored, I took the master of 
the locanda to show me the way about the ruins, and 
directed him to leave me in peace till dark. "Wonder- 
ful hours they were, that day and a large part of the 
next, alone in that City of the Dead ! The principal 
buildings remaining of the once vast town are all en- 
closed by a lofty and massive Saracenic wall, composed 
as usual of fragments of other buildings, and encircling 
a space of three or four acres, which formed in the days 
of the Arab power a stronghold or citadel. Round this 
wall flows a lovely bright brook, singing and dancing 
like a merry child beside a blind and desolate old man. 
Entering through a breach of rather difficult access in 
the south-west angle of the wall, the whole majestic 
spectacle of temples and palaces rose before me ; and 
when I had dismissed my guide I had the full intense 
enjoyment of them all to myself. There is naturally 
nothing to attract the poor inhabitants of the village 
half a mile off into these precincts ; and, if there were, 
the fear of the Djinns which haunt them seems to be so 
overpowering that it would be a sufficient restraint. 
Thus, in all the solemnity of utter solitude, without one 
other human being near, and a thousand miles from all 
who knew or loved me, I drank in through the long 
silent hours the majestic grandeur of Baaibec. 

I shall not attempt to give a description, a catalogue 
of temples and palaces in that wondrous place, with 
technical phrases and accurate measurements. He who 
desires such information will find it in a multitude of 
books. "When all is said and done, and temples are 
described as "peripteral" or "in antis," octastyle or 



THE CITY OF THE SUN. 



29 



hexastyle, with, columns, Doric or Corinthian, six feet 
and a half by sixty, or five feet by forty, no very lucid 
idea is conveyed to the mind, or, if it be, it is of that 
species of lucidity which effectually expels the sublime, 
as when we contemplate a line of poetry in the point 
of view of the trochees and dactyls of which it is com- 
posed. Let me try if I can possibly convey more justly 
the impression which Eaalbec made on my heart, over- 
whelming me, as it were, under a sense of desolation no 
other spot on earth ever conveyed. 

Baalbec possesses two characters peculiarly its own 
— enormous magnitude and redundant richness. The 
buildings are not only of immense height and extent, 
but each individual block is of dimensions almost unex- 
ampled elsewhere. Five spans of my extended arms 
and some three feet over (thirty-one feet) only touched 
the extremities of one stone in the temple of Baal. The 
shafts of the pillars, standing and prostrate, are each 
miracles of size and perfection ; the fragments of palaces 
reveal halls of a magnificence unparalleled. Then all 
these enormous blocks and edifices are wrought with 
such lavish luxuriance of imagination, such incredible 
perfection of detail, that the idea of the Arabs that they 
were the work, not of men, but of genii, seemed perfectly 
natural. I wandered on, now revelling in beauty, now 
overawed with grandeur, till it seemed as if one's soul 
and heart could bear no more. Here were the tower- 
ing six columns of the giant fane of the Sun ; here the 
second temple, the most magnificent, the most perfect left 
to us of the ancient world. Passing out at the great 
ruined gateway, here are the vast and splendid square 



30 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



and hexagonal courts with their walls forming exedrge, 
and loaded with indescribable profusion of ornaments, 
columns, pilasters, entablatures, niches, and seats over- 
hung with garlands and sculptured wings of fanciful 
creatures. All that the richest of the styles of ancient 
architecture could achieve — the magnificent Corinthian 
in its most luscious dreams — seems perfected here. 
Streets and gateways and palaces, hardly distinguish- 
able in their decay, yet all on the same scale of 
grandeur and solidity, follow on beyond the courts 
and portico. One huge house stands with its ruined 
staircase like a great tower in the centre ; another, half 
underground, contains a vast stone hall, yet roofed and 
perfect. Further yet is the most splendid of all the 
palaces : noble Corinthian doorways and windows, and 
exquisite cornices and ornaments of broken entablatures, 
attest its surprising richness. I climbed up a shattered 
stair to the summit of the Saracenic wall, which here 
bounds the ruined city ; and there below, through an 
opening in the massive masonry, lay the living world — 
the glittering brook, a group of almond-trees in blossom, 
the village, the beautiful mosque, and Anti-Lebanon 
with his crown of snow. It was a sort of shock to look 
out on the world of the living from the City of the Dead, 
so completely do these ruins engross our souls. Only 
beyond the almond-trees was one vestige more of the 
elder city — an exquisite circular temple, with its colon- 
nade of six Corinthian columns and the architraves re- 
curved inwards from column to column — one of the 
loveliest gems of ancient architecture. The second day 
of my visit I went to see this temple, and also the 



THE CITY OP THE SUN. 



31 



Saracenic mosque, built as usual of pillars taken from 
other temples, and arranged, like that of Mecca, around 
a large quadrangle, double on three sides, and quadruple 
on that next to the Kaaba. Prom the capitals of the 
pillars spring pointed arches of very elegant form. The 
roof which they supported is all fallen down ; the grand 
marble fountain in the centre of the mosque is all broken 
and shattered, and the roots of the great plane-tree 
which overshadows it are breaking up the beautiful 
pavement. "What double desolation is here ! — the frag- 
ments of heathen shrines built into this once stately 
fane of Islam, and then, when both races of worshippers 
have passed away, ruin left to work his will ! Truly, I 
thought, 

Our little systems have their day, 
They have their day and cease to be ; 
They are but broken lights from Thee, 
And Thou, oh Lord, art more than they ! 

Walking up the valley I came to a different scene — 
the source of the lonely little brook which sings for ever 
round desolate Baalbec. There are here ruins of splen- 
did Moslem palaces and white marble fountains standing 
in the soft green grass and crystal water. Luxuriant 
weeping willows hang over the stream. Everything 
here is calm, soft, and sweet; lonely and sad, in- 
deed, and yet most beautiful. Over the willow 
branches hung masses of mistletoe, which I gathered 
with the thought how strange it was that we, v r hose 
progenitors had reverenced that plant when Baalbec 
was in its glory, should find it living here now when 
Baalbec is dead, and we, the children of the barbarians, 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



are "the heirs of all the ages, in the foremost files of 
Time. 5 ' A beautiful emblem, truly, was the mistletoe 
growing on our royal English oaks : the oak was Hesus, 
"the God, greatest and best," strongest and ever- 
during ; and the mistletoe was Man, weak and poor, 
but living in Him, and clinging to His everlasting 
arms. 

I saw these Moslem ruins, however, only on my 
second day in Eaalbec ; the first was all spent alone in 
the City of the Dead. I turned away from the view of 
the outer world, and, descending the walls, explored yet 
further into the ruins beyond what my guide had indi- 
cated — the most awful part of all, the huge subterranean 
vaults which underlie half the city. The meaning of 
these extraordinary places I cannot pretend to surmise. 
They are too dark for roads, and far too splendid for 
cloacas. Most of them are built of stones about six feet 
high (admirably hewn, like everything in Eaalbec), two 
ranges forming the walls. Upon these rests a projecting 
cornice of massive stone, and from this springs the lofty 
rounded arch of the vaults, At intervals of about 
twenty yards there are, carved in high relief on the 
keystones of the arch, half-figures of Astarte, or some 
other female goddess, gazing down with strange, solemn 
looks on the intruder in those twilight realms. It is 
impossible to imagine anything more awful than these 
vast sepulchral corridors, into which the daylight only 
enters, glimmering from the half-underground openings 
at the end of such of them as emerge at all into the 
upper air. Several of them are at right augles to these, 
crossing from one to another at some hundred yards 



THE CITY OP THE SXTNT. 



33 



from the entrance. In one of them I saw, high up in 
the second range of stones, an opening leading into an 
abyss of darkness. Another magnificent portal, carved 
in all the Corinthian richness of decoration led me into 
what seemed a loftier, vaster vault than the others. 
I pursued it a dozen paces in the utter darkness, but 
who would dare go on ? The dead silence, the thick 
darkness, and oppressive air of these sepulchral vaults 
— sepulchres, it might be, under a Dead City — are 
wholly indescribable in their awe. I wandered from 
one to another, and entered, as I could bear, through 
doors which seemed like portals of Dante's Hell; till 
the sense of awe became almost horror, and I could 
endure no more. 

Last of all, I returned to the Temple of Baal, to spend 
there the closing hours of the evening. Prints and 
sketches must have made most readers acquainted with 
this sublime building, its huge walls still perfect, its 
colonnade of enormous pillars still half standing, and 
its inner portal of unapproachable magnificence, with 
its broken architrave and keystone hanging fallen half- 
way from its place. The broad lintel itself bears a 
beautiful bas-relief of an eagle armed with a thunder- 
bolt, hovering, as it would seem, over the head of the 
entering worshipper. The view of the interior of the 
temple from this doorway is probably the finest remain- 
ing of any of the ancient world. The roof is utterly 
gone (it is supposed to have been hypaethral), but the 
walls stand nearly perfect to their fall height, and the 
ranges of columns and pilasters with which they are 
faced retain all their beauty. Even the place where 



34 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



the statue of the god must have stood can easily be 
traced. A great stone lying overturned on the spot was 
probably its pedestal. It always takes time for the 
effect of grandeur to sink into our minds. Beauty we 
discern at a glance, though its power does not fail also 
to grow and strengthen. But the immensity of a build- 
ing or a mountain does not reveal itself till our eyes 
have, as it were, learned the perspective of its magnitude, 
as a child first learns to see. The solemnity and deso- 
lation of great ruins must be seen calmly and alone to 
arrive at any sense of their sublimity. It was a boon 
to be alone in Eaalbec. The stillness and the calm were 
most impressive. I remained for hours in the glorious 
fane so strangely my own, and tried to conceive what 
had been the thoughts of the worshippers when last 
the incense had risen from those broken altars to the 
mysterious Baal. Had any prayers to which we could 
respond ever ascended there ? Who knows how much 
light ever broke into the temples of ancient heathen- 
dom? Perchance even the most polluted of all had 
some opening to heaven found by the eyes which sought 
it faithfully. Said not old Scotus well, " Surely the 
Divine clemency suffereth not the souls which seek 
earnestly for God to wander for ever in the mists of 
error, and be lost therein ?" It seemed to me as if the 
holy depths of those Syrian heavens, in which the calm 
moon was now shining over the broken walls, must 
have received from all time the prayerful gaze of human 
eyes. Perhaps from many a heart had there ascended 
aspirations like those dimly breathed through the won- 
derful Hymn of Cleanthes to Zeus — -a prayer which 



THE CITY OF THE SUN". 35 

even our happier souls, rich with the spiritual treasures 
of two thousand years, might not err to offer now. 

O Thou who o'er the clouds dost dwell, 
Our wild aud wandering wishes quell ! 
Direct each will, each thought control, 
Light the dread darkness of the soul ! 
That our wills, blended into thine, — 
Concurrent in the Law Divine, 
Eternal, universal, just, and good, — ■ 
Honouring and honoured in our servitude, 
Creation's paean march may swell ! 
The march of Law immutable, 
Whereby as to its noblest end 
All being doth for ever tend. 

Does not the deepest and noblest of all modern poems, 
the last word of our philosophy, breathe the self-same 
faith and hope in God and His Law and its great final 
fulfilment ? — 

That God who ever lives and loves, 
One God, one law, one element, 
And one far-off, divine event 
To which the whole creation moves ! 



D 2 



THE CITIES OP THE Pi ST. 



THE CITY OF VICTORY. 

Eueoclydon ! Reader, have yon ever been in a real 
Levanter? No darkness, no rain, no long Atlantic 
Andes of billows, but short, quick, high waves, rushing 
hither and thither, blue as the Southern sky, necked 
with veins of foam, and tossing their snowy manes and 
crests mast high into the air, while the Egyptian sun 
shines down from the deep, cloudless sky as calmly over 
all the turmoil as the Sphinx over the battle of the Pyra- 
mids. It is an amazing sight ! I stood once gazing at 
it bewildered, and every few moments thrown down by 
the tremendous shocks of the side waves, which rattled 
the great ship like a child's toy, and drenched the deck 
in foam. Yet so entranced was I with the glory and 
the beauty of the scene, I could not go away. "We 
were sailing to Alexandria, and already some towers on 
the coast had been hailed as landmarks, when down 
came over the sea this wild hurricane, the true " Storm- 
wind Euroclydon;" and away it bore us, far off from 
sight of Egypt, half a hundred leagues, away towards 
the shores of Crete The whole day long it blew, and 
when the night came on the tempest grew worse ; crash 
after crash resounded on all sides, and it seemed as if no 
work of human hands could bear such assaults as the 
wild waves were making on our vessel from stem to 



THE CITY OF VICTORY. 



37 



stern, larboard and starboard. T was voyaging alone to 
the East, determined to see Mle and Jordan and Ilyssns 
before I died ; and, woman as I was, to make my way 
alone if no pleasant company offered. So it came to 
pass that, while the gale was blowing so fiercely, I was 
lying alone on the floor of my cabin, rejoicing when I 
could keep my head from being knocked against the 
sides. Presently, in the middle of the night, an 
American lady, with whom I had only exchanged a few 
courteous words, came tottering into the little den, and 
sank down on the same mattress opposite me. " I came 
to see how you are getting on " It was a kindly 
thought ; and so we lay half that strange night, talking 
of death, which seemed knocking at our doors, and of 
all those things in the infinite Beyond of which man 
gains a clearer sight when the bars of life are loosened. 
And so it came to pass that, when that night was over, 
and we set foot at last upon the shores of Egypt, that 
brave, good woman and I were no longer strangers, but 
friends, and as friends we lived together for many days. 
In all my recollections of Egypt she takes a part, 
together with her kind husband and dear little child, 
who brought childhood and playfulness with us even to 
the door of the Pyramids. 

Alexandria, and unimaginable confusion ! The ship 
boarded by hordes of half-naked porters and gorgeously- 
attired dragomans, while crowds of wild creatures — 
black, brown, and white — scuffling, screaming, struggling 
like maniacs on the quay, seemed to strive to jostle 
each other into the water. A stout Syrian, with a yel- 
low handkerchief on his head, vouchsafed to guard me 



38 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



and my properties to the hotel to which he belonged, 
and with a great stick he flourished about, hitting right 
and left and on all sides. "When we had landed at 
last, and stood among this tribe of demented creatures, 
I discovered my best-beloved trunk deposited safely out 
of the mud on a prostrate colossal statue, recognizable 
by its head-dress as that of a king of Lower Egypt of 
Pharaonic times ! A curious entry this, in truth, into 
the land of " Egypt old and vast" — the realm where 
silence and grandeur and mystery are supposed to have 
their eternal abode. 

Modern Alexandria, as all the world and the passen- 
gers by the Overland route are well aware, has small 
interest, save as affording the first glimpse into the 
East — a very mongrel East, however, it is, not to be 
compared to Cairo, yet a foretaste of that wonderful 
City of Dreams. No description ever conveyed to me 
what an Eastern city might resemble ; and it is almost 
hopeless to think I can give to another my reflex of the 
impressions on the brain as one drives for the first time 
through those fantastic streets. Every figure is a pic- 
ture — new in face, new in dress, new, above all, in 
bearing and character. It is this which gives endless 
amusement in watching the stately walk of the rich old 
man, the nimble bounding race of half-dressed young- 
ones, and the laughing, shuffling gait of the women, 
who always seem making a masquerading joke of their 
ridiculous bundle of attire, and of the brass screw over 
their noses to hold up the veil over their mouths ! The 
clamour of shouting voices, rarely drowned by any 
sound of wheels; the strings of camels, whose large 



THE CITY OF VICTORY. 



39 



burdens fill the narrow streets from side to side ; the 
innumerable donkeys, with boys screaming " Ashmala 
Djemala," and belabouring them behind; solemn old gen- 
tlemen seated in state, smoking pipes six feet long ; the 
rich variety of the street architecture — of which Chester 
gives just the faintest hint ; the great stone archways 
leading into romantic courts; latticed windows, in project- 
ing balconies, touching across the streets; lovely minarets, 
shooting up into the cloudless sky ; mosques of red and 
white stone, quaint and beautiful ; shops all open, with 
all the goods displayed to the street, and the shopman 
seated cross-legged, playing with his child or his cat : 
on every side there is a picture one longs to preserve, in 
all its rich colouring, on one's mind for ever. 

But this is all more true of Cairo than of Alexandria. 
Grecian and Italian have their share here, and sadly jar 
with the rest. Only here and there are strange remi- 
niscences of what once was Alexandria. On walls in 
poor streets, where there are preparations for illumina- 
tion, you may trace in the figure of the lamps the 
mystic Abracadabra, the double triangle of Gnostic 
divination. Where the workmen are digging founda- 
tions for some new house, you look down and see shat- 
tered marble and porphyry columns and fragments of 
statues, for which we should contend in England for our 
museums. A little out of the modern city, under the 
hill on which stands Diocletian's column (miscalled of 
Pompey), there was disinterred, just before my arrival, 
a very interesting relic — an early Christian church, 
hewn in the tufa-like substance of the hill, and closed 
up, no doubt, for sixteen or eighteen centuries. The 



40 THE CITIES 0E THE PAST. 

frescoes were quite vivid when I saw them. "No doubt 
could exist that they belonged to a very early date, for, 
though rude enough, there was no trace of the Byzan- 
tine poverty of style, but, on the contrary, precisely the 
broad, bold outlines of the frescoes from Herculaneum 
and Pompeii I had just seen in the Museo Borbonico. 
One of these was especially interesting. It was a full- 
length, life-size picture of Christ, so different from our 
received ideas of His appearance that I should not have 
guessed it was meant for Him, save for the word 
"Christos," in Greek, written over the head. It 
represented a powerful dark man, with masses of black 
hair cut short over his ears. The attitude was digni- 
fied and commanding, without that peculiar tenderness 
and sadness usually expressed by the droop of the head, 
so singularly antedated by the great bronze bust of 
Plato found in Herculaneum. It is idle to make or 
mar theories from a single instance of very uncertain 
date, yet it does appear to me that this fresco deserves 
to be taken per contra the very interesting researches 
lately published in the Art- Union Journal. A very 
ancient church has certainly here commemorated an 
idea wholly opposed to our later one. And, at a period 
which cannot be much earlier, we find that the modern 
conception of Christ's head was then attributed (almost 
without a variation) to the great Philosopher of the 
Academy! There are here curious materials for 
thought. Christian negroes to this day, it is said, 
much prefer Hack images of Christ to all others. Wo 
marvel, indeed, if poor Uncle Tom should not have 
selected Legree's complexion as the most Divine ! 



THE CITY OF VICTORY. 



41 



Would that there were no people who, in far more 
serious sense, "make a God as black as themselves !" 

But, though modern Alexandria is but a poor, mongrel 
city of little interest, Old Alexandria, stretching far 
outside the existing town, offers to us at least a vast 
field for the work of memory and imagination. There 
is a huge plain stretching to the sea, all broken by small 
mounds and dells, and covered with the same dwarf 
wild marigold which grows alike over the forum of 
Pompeii, and the Acropolis of Athens, and the Courts 
of Baal in the Syrian Heliopolis. The Arab workmen 
are. excavating everywhere into the hillocks, and using 
the materials thence extracted to form the roads. These 
mounds are all formed of broken bricks and pottery, 
debris of houses and temples, baths and theatres, 
beyond number. The city was built of brick, like 
Babylon ; and now, like Babylon, it lies in the dust, 
and the little weed has woven over it one great green 
winding-sheet. Not a stone is to be found standing for 
miles to mark that here stood the magnificent capital 
of the Ptolemies, the last home of the wisdom and 
science of the ancient world — the city of Plotinus and 
Proclus, of Philo and Iamblichus ! Ay ! and of an- 
other, to whom tenderer feelings are due than to her 
great masters ! Here lived the philosopher, here died 
the martyr Hypatia. Who will write truly her story ? 
Kingsley's romance is surely but one huge anachronism. 
To make the martyr of the old philosophy the mouth- 
piece for Christian fears and anxieties — was this just ? 
Who that has read the marvellous thoughts of Greek 
and Eoman sages but know that their search for truth, 



42 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



honest and earnest as it was, never partook of that 
agonizing anxiety which belonged to another age and 
creed, when men were taught that to err in that awful 
task, even involuntarily, might incur eternal penalty ? 
Who can doubt that Hypatia — that wondrous woman, 
so beautiful as to win all hearts, so pure as to command 
all reverence, so gifted as to hold the foremost school 
of philosophy and science in the world — who can doubt 
that she " sought the light of cloudless day" as fear- 
lessly as Plato or Antoninus? But, whatever her un- 
known thoughts may have been, this alone we can 
tell, that she died the martyr of her faith — a fearful 
martyrdom, when the fiendish band of sainted Cyril's 
monks tore her beautiful form to pieces on their 
high altar with shards and shells ! Truly, it seemed 
to me, as I paced alone over the green grave of 
ruined Alexandria, " It was meet that the city where 
this crime was done should lie desolate for ever. 
It was right that the church which committed it 
should groan in bondage in that land for a thousand 
years." 

There is somewhat very solemn in these utterly 
ruined cities. We pause and ask whether our own 
vast busy towns will ever lie silent as they, 

And unknown wanderers in the future wood 

"Where London stands, shall ask where London stood. 

If not a wood, yet still more complete desolation 
must, we know, arrive ere many millenniums, and the 
waters leaving the southern oceans shall incline over 
all our busy hemisphere. A curious and a strangely 
suggestive speculation truly ! 



THE CITY OF VICTORY. 



43 



Two days spent at Alexandria were amply sufficient 
to view all it contained of interest for one little versed 
in antiquarian lore; and I gladly prepared to join my 
kind fellow-passengers on their road to Cairo. 'Not 
very easy, however, did it prove for us to make good 
our laudable intentions. The affair of moving a large 
party among a set of Arab porters, drivers, ticket- 
takers, and railway officials, all jabbering in uttermost 
excitement and confusion, and understanding neither 
English nor Italian, is an achievement of which to be 
vainglorious. When we had attained our end, it was 
somewhat disheartening to be told at Cairo that my 
beloved great trunk must go on to Bombay with the 
luggage of the Overland Mail passengers — it was an 
inevitable necessity that it should do so — and against 
" Kismet" there was no rebelling. We did rebel, 
however, and, after an hour's pitched battle with the 
demented Arab -chattering guards and porters, it was 
recovered, thanks to my American friend's intervention. 
A vast trial to any English temper is such a scene, and 
the different way in which New Englanders always 
pass through them suggest some odd inquiries, There 
is an imperiousness in the true English mind, rising up 
immediately against any obstacle in its path, to which, 
1 believe, we owe a vast deal of our national achieve- 
ments, physical and moral. Assuredly we owe to it 
the way in which travelling is facilitated in every 
corner of the world where English people do congre- 
gate. One after another we pour on, staring at every 
delay, insisting on more and more rapid conveyance, 
fretting, fuming, making ourselves objects of astonish- 



44 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



ment to the calm Oriental, and of ridicule to our fellow- 
Europeans; but still eventually always conquering, 
and leaving rough, places smooth, and crooked things 
straight behind us. "Fag an bealach" is an Anglo- 
Saxon far more than a Celtic war-cry. That sign of a 
thoroughly healthy constitution, the arising of a slight 
fever after every wound, is peculiarly our own, No 
true-born Briton ever takes meekly being stopped, 
bullied, cheated, and thwarted, but a decided quicken- 
ing of the blood, with a few other febrile symptoms, is 
sure to ensue ! Not so, however, our Yankee cousins ; 
their good temper, patience, and even indifference 
under such aggravations seem to bespeak a temperament 
with a far more moderate share of phlogiston. 

I should like to be able to convey to the reader's 
imagination one of the less inextricably complicated 
scenes of confusion during our transit from Alexandria 
to Cairo. 

Scene. — The door of the principal hotel in Alexandria — 
job carriages opposite ready to convey travellers to 
the station. A party of Americans and English 
standing over a mountain of luggage to he tarns- 
ported fro?n the hotel to the carriages. About three 
hundred natives of Egypt , with a sprinkling of 
Greeks and Nubians, blocking up the way. 
{Chorus of three hundred.) 
" Backsheesh, backsheesh, backsheesh !" 

{Semi-chorus of volunteer porters.) 
"You want a porter, Sare? You want a porter, 
Angliss Miss? " 



THE CITY OF "VICTORY. 



45 



♦ (5 'emi- chorus of donkey b oys.) 
" Vera goot donkey! Vera goot donkey. All right ! 
All right!" 

{Full chorus da capo.) 
" Backsheesh, backsheesh, backsheesh ! " 
( General scuffle to carry the luggage and waylay the 

travellers for backsheesh.) 
{American gentleman speaking with vast self-control.) 
" Will you go out of the way ?" 

{English gentleman, in an unmistakable rage.) 
" You confounded scoundrels, clear the road, and don't 
touch my trunks ! " 

{Full chorus.) 
" Backsheesh, backsheesh, backsheesh!" 

{Native hotel servants addressing the mob.) 
"Ashmala! Djimala! Clear the way. La La, Emshi 
Emshi, go away, go away." 

{Sotto voce to the travellers.) 
"Give them backsheesh." 

{American lady, pathetically and imploringly.) 
" Oh, do see what has become of my dressing-case 
among all these dreadful people ! " 

{American child, with sagacity and animation.) 
" I guess it's considerable far off by this time, ma' ! " 

{English lady, with vigour and resolution.) 
"Here, porter, facchino ! whatever you are! Prendete 
questo grande baule. Put it on the top of the carriage 
— so ! Come back for the others into the hotel. Oh 
* * * h ! ! merciful powers ! " 



46 



THE CITIES OP THE PAST. 



{Hotel servants, for the purpose of clearing the way, have 
thrown a large bucketful of warm water on the 
crowd, which the ill-fated lady {author of the pre- 
sent work) meets in its descent, and is thoroughly 
drenched and nearly scalded thereby.) 

{ General chorus of sympathizers.) 
" Backsheesh, backsheesh, backsheesh! " 

{Semi-chorus of donkey boys.) 
" All right, all right; vera goot donkey; all right !" 

{Semi-chorus of porters.) 
"Want a portare, Angliss Miss? Give backsheesh !" 

( The party is finally packed, and the carriages start, 
while the drivers slash cruelly right and left, and 
amid the howls of the victims arises the grand finale 
chorus.) 

" Backsheesh, backsheesh, backsheesh !" — Bis and da 
capo. 

{Echo down the street.) 

" Backsheesh — sheesh — sheesh !■ ' 

The next scene which occurred was more ridiculous 
still in a different way. I can hardly hope the reader 
will believe that the story has not been improved, but 
in all honesty I will endeavour to relate it precisely as 
it occurred. The party of Americans with whom I had 
formed acquaintance joined me in taking our place in a 
first-class broad-gauge railway carriage, at one end of 
which- were seated when we entered a rather raw- 
looking Scotch youth, and opposite him a bright and 
pleasant Anglo-Indian lady of middle age, proceeding 
to Bombay, for the third time in her life. The Scotch 



THE CITY OF VICTORY. 



47 



gentleman, whom we shall call Mr. Thompson, was 
doubtless on his way to undertake the government of a 
few millions of Hindoos ; but, whatever was his profes- 
sion, his ignorance of Egyptian matters was something 
astounding. Our curiosity was first excited by hearing 
him ask, a few miles only from Alexandria, "I suppose 
we shall see the Pyramids very soon?" The Anglo- 
Indian lady, with a droll glance at us, replied, promptly, 
"Of course you will see them, Mr. Thompson; the 
great Pyramid, as you know, has been turned into the 
railway- s t ati on . ' ' 

Mr. T, innocently, but rather surprised : — 

" Indeed ! Well, that is very curious. "What won- 
derful things our English engineers can do ! But I 
never heard of this before. The Sphinx is close by the 
Pyramid, I understand?" 

Lady. — "Very close, as you say. It always takes 
shelter in the Pyramid when it rains !" 

Mr. Thompson, — "Oh, Ma'am, that's not possible, 
surely?" 

Lady. — " jSTot possible ! Of course it's possible ; you 
don't know what the Sphinx is, apparently, Mr. Thomp- 
son." 

(Mr. Thompson relapses into silence, feeling rather un- 
comfortable. The train proceeds, and we pass over 
a branch of the Nile. After due exclamations on 
all sides, Mr. Thompson pursues his geographical 
inquiries.) 

" How soon shall we come to the Cataracts ? " 
American Lady.—" Cataracts, sir ? Don't you know 
they are three weeks' journey up the Nile ?" 



48 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



Anglo-Indian Lady. — " But there is no use going to 
see them now, Mr. Thompson, they are all done away 
with lately. The Mle has been couched for both the 
Cataracts." 

Mr. Thompson, aghast. — " Madam!" 

English Lady, looking at her compatriots. — " Yes, in- 
deed, that was a wonderful operation. Who was the 
oculist ?" 

Anglo-Indian. — " Oh, Solomon, to be sure. It is said 
it was the greatest achievement ever made in optical 
surgery." 

English Lady. — " The great age of the Kile of course 
made it peculiarly difficult. We have always heard, 
you know, of the Old Nile." 

Mr. Thompson holes from one speaker to another, and in- 
trenches himself in a tower of silence. The train draws 
up quickly past a small station, ivhere stand two half- 
naked brown old Arabs with sugar-canes for sale. 
Anglo-Indian Lady, excitedly. — " Look, look, Mr. 

Thompson ! Mummies, Mr. Thompson ! mummies, I 

declare ! " 

( Out go Mr. Thompson's head and shoulders through the 
window.) 

" You're very fortunate, Mr. Thompson, very lucky, 
indeed. I have been three times to India this way, and 
I never saw mummies out before. It's the damp which 
has brought them out. They are so dry, you know, 
naturally." 

{Mr. Thompson having purchased a sugar-cane from one 
of the mummies, resigns himself to scraping and 
munching it for the rest of the way.) 



THE CITY OF VICTORY. 



49 



It was Sunday morning, my first day in Cairo. I 
took it into my head to try and walk to the desert, and 
enjoy alone the impressions it might bring. As it hap- 
pened, the dragoman of whom I enquired the way in- 
dulged in the delusion that the English word " desert *' 
meant simply the " country/' as opposed to the town. 
Accordingly, with many gesticulations, he gave me to 
understand I should reach the desired region by follow- 
ing a certain road, and — having with difficulty made 
him understand I did not require the pleasure of his 
attendance, and that Englishwomen could walk by 
themselves — I set off gaily on my way. Soon I had 
left' the city behind, and found myself, after half-a-mile 
of suburb, in an avenue which I will venture to say is 
without its equal in the world. It is a causeway raised 
to a considerable height above the level fields of corn 
and cotton, in width some eighty feet or more, and in 
length some three English miles. On each side grow, 
in unbroken rows, the magnificent Acacia Lebbek, one 
of the grandest trees of the East, with huge gnarled 
stems like those of our oldest oaks, and giant heavy 
branches interlacing across the vast avenue in a mass of 
luxuriant foliage, through which the sunlight breaks 
glittering on the scene below. And a bright scene it 
is, that high road to Cairo. Men and women in every 
imaginable variety of costume pass along in throngs, 
the light blue dresses of the women and the white ones 
commonest among the men contrasting with the sheen of 
the trees and the glimpses of the deep ultra-marine sky 
of Egypt. There are no carts or carriages, no vulgar 
sounds of grinding wheels of waggon or omnibus ; only 

E 



50 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



long strings of camels laden with, bales of merchandise, 
and droves of asses without number bearing into the 
city loads of bright green clover, gleaming like emeralds 
in the glistening sunlight. Ear away on either side 
stretch rich level plains, with crops of corn, and rice, 
and sugar-cane ; and here and there in the distance are 
groves of palms and acacias, an Arab village, or a 
stately palace amid its gardens. I walked along in a 
dream of beauty. The air that February morning 
seemed like the atmosphere of Paradise, bringing back 
in every breath health and vigour to lungs laden with 
the fogs of the North, and filling the senses with that 
sweet exhilaration we might deem belonged to a Peri's 
heaven of odour and balm. The Arabs talked, and 
sung, and directed their camels with a " La, la !" or a 
" Schwoi, schwoi!" (No, no ! — gently, gently!); and 
every here and there we passed a water-wheel, beside 
which the workmen were singing their sweet mono- 
tonous accompaniment to the groaning wood — a sound 
I soon learned to connect inextricably with every recol- 
lection of Egypt. No one dreamed of molesting me. 
The poor Arab women, carrying their burdens of grace- 
ful vases or baskets on their heads, often smiled kindly 
at me, and made pantomimes of good-will when they 
found I could not understand their words. Two of 
them walked a long way close beside me, and touched 
my shoulder at parting as if for fullest encouragement. 
I did not see one European as I walked on and on for 
two delicious hours, now pausing to drink in enjoyment, 
now hurrying forward, always thinking I should arrive 
at the expected " desert.' ' At last I reached the end of 



THE CITY OF VICTORY. 51 

that glorious avenue, and the Nile in all its majesty 
suddenly broke through the trees. There it lay, rolling- 
its yellow waters far as the eye could reach north and 
south, in grand slow curves and reaches, like a great 
golden chain Which Heaven had thrown upon the breast 
of the bridal earth. And far away there stood in their 
lonely height — giants even at that vast distance — the 
eternal Pyramids. I had never seen them till that 
moment, but none could mistake them. It was enough 
to stir the dullest pulse to look thus for the first time 
unexpectedly on the Pyramids and on the Nile — the 
oldest and grandest work of human hands, and the most 
mysterious and majestic of the works of nature. Yet 
the Nile had the pre-eminence of interest, though I 
had seen it already on my way. Who can explain why 
all rivers affect us as they do ? A hill, a forest, a lake, 
we admire and think of as a beautiful thing. But a 
river is almost a person, and, like a living man or 
woman, it claims always its share of notice before any 
other object which may be present. We enter some 
famous gallery thronged with paintings and statues 
which we have longed for years to behold — we lift the 
curtain of some glorious dome of Italy with almost 
trembling awe, yet, before we may gaze at the picture, 
or give ourselves up to the rapture of the cathedral, we 
are forced by some inward instinct to give one glance 
before us at the men and women, all uninteresting as 
they may be, who stand within; to pay, in fact, our 
tribute to humanity, as having a prior claim on us to 
any work of sculptor's chisel or painter's brush, or any 
temple made with hands. Almost in the same mys- 

e 2 



52 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



terious way, we look always first at the river in the 
landscape. Even a poor and turbid stream will have 
its wistful gaze from the spectator before he looks 
further. Is it that, like ourselves, a river only has 
beginning, middle, end; the tiny source, the full, 
strong, flowing stream — the bourn, at last, whence the 
waters roll not back, nor any traveller may return ? It 
may be so perchance; and the obvious similitude which 
has struck every heart seems truer and deeper as we 
think of it. The river near its source — is it not a poor 
feeble thing?— a mere thread of water, winding its 
difficult way between the most trifling obstacles, turned 
aside from its course by a rock or a fallen tree, and 
ready to lose itself in dry, low swamp or marsh, with- 
out force to push further. Doubtless, if we could stand 
—as so many brave hearts have striven to do — beside 
the fount of the Nile, it would be hard to think that 
little trickling stream was actually the same as the 
great river of Egypt, and that it should grow and swell 
deeper and stronger, receiving the floods of heaven and 
the tribute of earth, till at last it should roll in resist- 
less seas of waters, bearing fertility and blessing over 
all the land. Hardly could we bring ourselves to call 
that poor weak rill the 'Nile ! But before one eye at 
least in the universe the feeble spring and the mighty 
river are one. He sees it all mapped out from its 
source in weakness to its end in power. And can ive 
never rise high enough into the upper air of thought to 
see like Him our human fellow-rivers, not only in their 
feeble struggles through the rocks and stones in their 
path, but as they shall be hereafter, far away, perhaps, 



THE CITY OF VICTORY. 



53 



a thousand years to come, down cataracts of death, and 
past long deserts of unknown worlds — but as they shall 
surely he at last, each flowing on a majestic benediction 
through the universe, reflecting on his ever-swelling 
bosom the infinite glory of God ? 

After a few days spent in Cairo, we established our- 
selves in a house kept by a worthy Piedmontese, im- 
mediately over the Nile, in the small town called Old 
Cairo, or Roman Babylon. From thence, sometimes on 
foot, but often er riding, I made my way daily to the 
city on one side, or into the desert on the other. The 
road to Cairo lay through fields of (to me) unknown 
vegetables, bordered by great hedges of cactus ten or 
twelve feet high, with here and there pretty clumps 
and avenues of trees. Through this rural scenery the 
glimpses of the great city, with its countless minarets 
and the enormous yellow marble mosque of the citadel 
standing out against the ultra-marine sky, were often 
very beautiful. Not so remarkable, however, is this 
view of Cairo as that from the opposite side on the 
desert road to the Tombs of the Khalifs and the Petri- 
fied Forest. There the gate of the city, the long castel- 
lated and turreted wall, and the citadel, with its dome 
and minarets rising behind, form precisely the sort of 
ideal fortress of the "Paynim Saracene" we all picture 
to ourselves in childhood in reading romances of the 
Crusades; and (should our genius lie in original com- 
position) we have probably, in the intervals of uncom- 
fortable sums, drawn it very frequently upon our slates. 
It was actually startling to behold in stone and mortar 
here at Cairo, and afterwards in the great castle beside 



54 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



Solomon's Pools, the realization of childhood's vision of 
Giant Despair's abode — Ogre's House — and the iden- 
tical fortress from which the " Captive Knight" uttered 
his [distracting appeals. The sensation was like that 
most painful one when we fancy we have seen and 
heard, at some unknown time previously, all that at 
the moment is passing before us, and Memory plays us 
false by pretending to be occupied, when it is impos- 
sible she can ha*ve any part in the matter. The child- 
hood of the world still lingers in the East, and meets 
us with reminiscences of our own early years at every 
turn. Eastern races always paint objects just as chil- 
dren do, not by looking at them and observing their 
real perspective and foreshortening, but by sitting 
down and imagining how they ought to look — "con- 
structing the idea of the camel out of their own con- 
sciousness" — and making it as tall as the palm-tree 
beside which it is standing. Egyptian and Mnevite 
sculptures, with beings twenty feet high, rivers two 
feet wide full of large fish, and bulls with five legs ; 
all these are precisely the sort of compositions in which, 
I suppose, we universally indulged when first possessed 
of paper and pencil. 

Eiding one day as usual into Cairo, I found the 
suburb through which I entered in a state of excite- 
ment strongly resembling an old English fair, or more 
properly, perhaps, like Donnybrook in its glory; for 
the Arabs, in their gaiety and clamour, might fairly be 
taken for a Celtic population. There were great stands 
of booths offering piles of white and rose-coloured lolly- 
pops, tents full of uproarious people enjoying unknown 



THE CITY OF YICTOEY. 



55 



recreations, and in the middle fonr or five unmistak- 
able " merry-go-rounds" of the most approved patterns 
in full rotation. "Bayume," I cried to the dragoman 
who followed me in green jacket and large white 
muslin trousers, magnificently bestriding his donkey, 
" Bayume, what is all this about? What does it 
mean?" I repeated, seeing him look stupid, and point- 
ing with my stick to the group of riotous boys tumbling 
and playing in the merry-go-round. " This," said 
Bayume, impressively, " this is lamentation ! It is for 
our princess. She dead lately. This go on for a week, 
lamentation." It was nearly as absurd as when passing 
two or three old women sitting howling at the door of 
a palace, I imagined they were making fun, and laughed 
cheerily in their faces. The insult to their profession 
(for they were regular paid mourners) was unpardon- 
able, and I was assailed by such an outcry of unques- 
tionable yells, that I was glad to flee the place. In 
Europe we hire men to be "mutes " at our funerals: 
in the East they hire women to make as much noisy 
lamentation as possible. Perhaps there is not much to 
choose in the way of good sense between the two insti- 
tutions. 

Will you follow me, reader, as I enter Cairo, and 
strive to convey the impressions of a ride through those 
dim, wonderful streets ? I cannot pretend to say how 
many days it needed to give to my own mind anything 
like a clear idea of them. Though I had longed all my 
life eagerly to see the temples and tombs of Egypt, and 
had, in fact, hardly thought of any interest beyond the 
antiquities when I resolved on the voyage ; yet, once in 



56 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



Cairo, the living interest around was so vivid, so in- 
tense, that I did not even desire to leave it for a day, 
and cheerfully deferred, for my friend's convenience, 
my visit to the Pyramids for more than a fortnight, 
though within sight of them every day. I felt as if 
revelling in a new life, a new world, where, as Shelley 
says, we shall hear and see 

All that is great and all that is strange 

In the boundless realm of unending change. 

"We are passing down a narrow street, and over head 
the projecting eaves nearly meet, as in the old streets 
of Florence. Here and there mats are hung across to 
afford still thicker shade, and so the southern sunlight 
breaks in only at intervals in narrow streams of glory, 
while deep, dark shadows rest on the mysterious courts 
and archways on either hand. There is no pavement, 
only well-trodden earth ; no carriages, only strings of 
camels and asses : thus, as in Venice, we are freed from 
the vulgar grinding sounds of Western cities, and our 
senses are all gratified at once ; for through the balmy 
spring atmosphere are constantly stealing the odours of 
burning cedar, of delicious chibouques and narghilis, of 
dry Eastern spices, and luscious attar of Mecca. The 
buildings are nearly all of stone, with doorways of 
intricate tracery, like our Norman arches, dog-tooth, 
and zigzag, and interlacing patterns. Often high up 
in the walls we catch glimpses of half-hidden windows, 
with mullions of twisted columns the most elaborate and 
fanciful our richest decorated and flamboyant churches 
of the West can boast. On either hand are shops open 
to the street ; the matted floor on which the owner and 



THE CITY OP VICTORY. 



57 



his customers are calmly seated is a foot or two above 
the level of the ground. Deep within are great rich 
courts, where . Persian carpets glowing with gorgeous 
colours are hanging in every direction, fastened against 
the stone balconies and pillars. And amid all this 
maze of architecture scarce an angle lacks its beautiful 
verdant tree — palm or acacia — catching the showers of 
sunlight on its leaves. And around the tree, and pass- 
ing in endless now through the streets, are crowds of 
men and women, some clad in magnificent robes, some 
with their broad chests and bronze limbs nearly bare ; 
but all, without exception, possessing the unfailing 
birthright of Eastern races — grace, and ease, and dig- 
nity. Strange it is, but it would seem as if only to us 
of the West it were possible to be awkward, mean in 
countenance, and vulgar in demeanour ; Moors, Arabs, 
Syrians, Turks, Hindoos, Persians, may be (though 
rarely) ugly and deformed, but, at worst, they are 
never vulgar. Their clothes, if in rags, hang on them 
with dignity. Their feet, if bare, are planted with a 
free, firm step. There is no jostling, no intrusive 
staring at strangers, in their streets ; but only gentle, 
mild looks, offensive to none. Walking alone in Naples, 
I had seen a man deliberately drive his carriage against 
me when I could not escape, and laugh when he nearly 
broke my arm with the shaft. I was a woman, and 
unguarded by any one who could punish him, and that 
was enough for the Neapolitan. My first stroll alone in 
Alexandria showed another phase of humanity. A 
venerable old Arab rose hastily from his seat and 
seized me by the arm, drawing me to one side. I 



58 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



looked startled, and he smilingly pointed to a camel 
whose head was nearly oyer mine, and whose noiseless 
steps overtaking me I had not heard. It is a pretty 
sign to notice the friendly way — often with arms on 
each other's shoulders — in which the people walk and 
greet each other in the street. The blind especially, of 
whom there are a fearful number, are nearly always led 
about in a sort of embrace, and are as gay and smiling 
as the rest. It would seem as if little children of a 
year or two old were rather more in the father's charge 
than the mother's. They are always crawling about 
the shops, or else riding astride on the man's shoulders, 
with their little arms embracing his red tarboosh, and 
their heads peeping over his like a small knob on the 
crown. 

Now we have reached a marble fountain, of which 
there are many in Cairo — it is an octagon kiosque or 
miniature temple of purest white marble, cut in lace- 
like tracery. The drinking- spouts on each side the 
surmounting balustrades and finials are all of polished 
brass. Further yet — and what is this giant door before 
us ? It is the portal of Sultan Hassein's Mosque. In 
a huge wall is sunk a sort of apse with fretted honey- 
combed roof, of such stupendous height and indescribable 
richness that it is hard to conceive anything more 
magnificent — a work of Ginns rather than of human 
architects. Entering it, as pigmies in a giant's abode, 
we pass through dark and solemn stone corridors into 
an open court paved with marble, in the centre of which 
is a great covered fountain for ablutions. Eound the 
four sides of the court open enormous pointed arches, 



THE CITY OF YICTOKY. 



59 



forming each the side of a large chamber. In one of 
them sits an old Iinaum, solemnly chanting, while seven 
or eight men opposite npon the ground answer him in 
regular response. Within and behind the mosque is the 
tomb of the great Sultan who built it. Faded and 
almost ruined after nearly seven centuries, the elaborate 
fretwork with the paint and carved wood necessarily 
much injured, these buildings are still most gorgeous ; 
graceful and rich beyond description, and imposing 
from their mass and proportions. 

It is an impressive sight when we first pass beyond 
the bounds cf Christendom, and see men worshipping 
Grod according to a wholly different faith. "We feel the 
real brotherhood which underlies our variances all the 
more strongly, because form and name have changed, 
and nothing remains but the substance of religion — the 
simple relation of creature and Creator. The familiar 
church, with its desk, and altar, and pews, and font ; 
the bareheaded congregation, and the surpliced priest ; 
the sonorous liturgy, and even the Holiest Name, are 
no longer to be found. Only the disciple of Islam is 
kneeling with uncovered feet in lowliest prostration in 
his solemn mosque, speaking under his breath to the 
never-imaged Allah perhaps that most beautiful of his 
prayers — " Thou art to me all that I desire. Make me 
to Thee what Thou desirest. Thou the most merciful 
of the merciful ! " * 

With all its shortcomings (and many and grievous they 
surely are on the side of spirituality), Hahometanism has 
pre-eminently maintained the character of all creeds in 
# Solwan, by Ibns Zafler. 



60 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



which One God alone is adored — namely, reverence. A 
perfectly corresponding scale might probably be found 
by any one who would carefully compare the multi- 
plicity of objects of worship in any creed, and the small 
amount of veneration or awe in the minds of the wor- 
shippers. Polynesian and African polytheists, as we 
all know, beat and punish their idols when they prove 
refractory. Let Homer and Hesiod testify to the 
absence of all true reverence in the nation for which 
they could act the part of Moses and the Prophets. 
Kay, more, the hagiolatry and Mariolatry of the Romish 
Church has resulted in this patent conclusion, that all 
Catholic nations use God's Name more irreverently than 
Protestants ; and, while professing so great an awe as to 
be unable to pray without mediators, they think nothing 
of taking His name in vain as an ordinary interjection, 
or to enforce a plea for a bajocco or a halfpenny. It 
would be too bold to pray, but it is not too bold to 
blaspheme ! I remember once in Venice noticing a 
grotesque-looking head rudely cut on one of the posts 
placed in the canals for the fastening of gondolas. The 
absurd stump was surmounted by an old, battered straw 
hat set on one side. As I passed, a gentleman of dis- 
tinguished appearance came out of the palace opposite, 
and lifted his hat to this image. Naturally I inquired 
of my gondolier what could be the object of this homage, 
and was overwhelmed by the reply — 

" Iddio ! Signora. Gesu Christo si euro." 

A little further along the same canal was the notice 
over a hairdresser's shop — Barhiere alia Dimna Provi- 
den%a. I had just come from the East at the time, and 



THE CITY OP YICTOitY. 



61 



could not but reflect how these Venetians, who could 
be all unconsciously guilty of such blasphemies, would, 
nevertheless, scorn the " dogs of infidels' ' I had watched 
so often with admiration, absorbed in silent worship of 
the Invisible One, 

Whatever errors a great creed may hold, it is always 
certain it contains also some vital and noble truths ; and 
assuredly it is by the truths it contains, and not by the 
errors (which only hurt and neutralize the truths), that 
any. or all religions hold sway over the human soul. 
Islam has not been the faith of hundreds of millions 
of souls for twelve centuries because it teaches that 
Mahomet was the greatest of the prophets, but be- 
cause it teaches that " There is no god but God ;" 
not because it permits polygamy, and offers a sensual 
paradise, but because it demands truth, justice, piety, 
charity, and temperance. These low thoughts of other 
creeds are on a par with the fears entertained for our 
own by those who forget the maxim that " to nothing 
but error can any truth be dangerous," and cry out 
that their Church is menaced, not because people have 
alleged falsehoods against its doctrines, but because they 
have discovered some actual facts of history, some un- 
deniable principles of criticism, and then applied them 
fearlessly, secure that, " if the doctrine be of God," He 
will take care of it. In reality, those English Chris- 
tians who think new truths are likely to overthrow old 
Churches, are guilty of the same infidelity to those very 
Churches which French and German atheists are to God 
himself. The Englishman says in effect, if not in words, 
" My Church cannot bear some truths. It dares not 



62 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST . 



look in the face modern biblical criticism, modern 
physical science, modern philosophy of history." The 
Frenchman or German says (as in a late article in the 
Revue des Deux Mondes on Essays and Reviews) that 
the development of the unquestionable truths that book 
contains will lead the nations to a point where, all fic- 
tion being stripped away from religion, it will be found 
that nothing remains ; that man has only been worship- 
ping all along his own ideal projected out of himself. 

It is a nobler faith which prompts some among us 
who say, " Give us truths, and let Churches stand or 
fall as they may be able to bear them." "Give us 
truths, and we are sure that never will one of them tend 
to anything save to make God more real to our souls.'' 
"Man's ideal projected out of himself !" Is it so 
indeed ? When the sun rises higher, shall Deity dis- 
appear from the universe like a spectre of the Brocken ; 
the shadow of the gazer himself thrown out upon the 
mist in the twilight of the ages ? All then that men 
have felt, and adored, and feared, and loved, all for 
which saints have lived, and martyrs died — all this is 
nothing ! A delusion, " a baseless fabric of a dream," 
has then effected more, inspired more, accomplished 
more, than any real power in earth or heaven ! Mosque 
and pagod, heathen fane and Christian church, vainly 
do ye t rise in dome, and spire, and minaret, to testify 
from every land to heaven that man believes, reveres, 
adores ! your massive walls rest only on an illusion, and 
a mistake. Yet a little while and prayer shall ascend 
no more. Man will learn a few truths more, will read 
a few pages further in the Book of Nature, and then he 



THE CITY OF YICTOBY. 



63 



will discover that there is no God of Truth, that the 
Book of Nature has no author ! 

The hare statement of such thoughts is surely their 
sufficient refutation. Rather must we "believe that each 
advance in knowledge will help forward that nobler 
faith which is to come — that faith of the future which 
will not be the extinguishing of past religions, but the 
essential life of them all revivified in an immortal 
resurrection. 

One accent of the Holy Ghost 
The heedless world hath never lost. 

The time will come when every ray ever shed upon 
human souls will be gathered and absorbed into a 
resplendent focus of truth and glory. Only let us go 
forth seeking these rays ; not seeking for blots and 
stains. Let us go to other nations and Churches, not 
to notice complacently where they err, and where we 
are wiser than they — where they cry " Allah, Allah !" 
and we say, "Lord, Lord!" — but let us go to them to 
see what truth is there ; what worthy thought of God, 
what high sense of duty to man, is at the basis of their 
faith ; what is it which this sect has taught which has 
enabled it to supply thousands of souls with spiritual 
food for ages ? No mere chaff can do this. There 
must needs be many grains of wheat where men live 
and grow. 

The Moslems are naturally those to whom our first 
interest turns in the East; but beside them are other 
sects having many claims to attention. Among them 
are the poor Copts, whose creed is said to be an orthodox 
form of Christianity, with only the blot of the Mono- 



64 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



thelite heresy, or doctrine that Christ had but one 
will. I confess it was hard to imagine that abstruse 
theories on such a subject occupied any place whatever 
in their simple minds. Their two chief churches which 
I visited were poor, dirty places ; and the good-natured 
Coptic priests and vivacious acolytes seemed anything 
but likely to entertain metaphysical speculations. There 
was something very primitive in the whole affair ; and 
perhaps the assertion of their missionary was true, 
that, in abandoning all formality to the Mahometans, 
they cherished more spiritual feelings. Certainly it 
seems that men's minds belong to two distinct classes, 
separable in every country. To the one the place and 
form of worship is infinitely important and valuable; to 
the other it is rather an obstacle and distraction than 
an aid to devotion to possess a beautiful cathedral and 
a chanted liturgy. One seeks the spirit through the 
form ; the other dreads to stop at the form and lose the 
spirit. At all events, the poor Copts would find more 
sympathy with the Low than with the High Church 
minds among us. Their little church, dark and dingy, 
with a sort of sheep -pen at the west end for women, 
was adorned by no pictures — only by two poor broken 
and filthy glass chandeliers. The screen closing off the 
chancel was not to be passed by a woman's unhallowed 
foot ; but, looking through it, I saw an altar, on which 
was a small box of burning incense. On the floor lay a 
heap of soiled surplices, gathered like linen for the wash ; 
and round and round — leaping, running, and romping 
behind and over the altar — were half a dozen young 
lads, striving to seize from the young priest a certain 



THE CITY OP VICTORY. 



65 



little bun of a mysteriously sanctified appearance. 
Eventually the Papas offered me another such bun, 
all covered over with crosses and queer marks; 
and on my presenting him in return with the 
moderate backsheesh of one shilling, he and I inter- 
changed quite enthusiastic tokens of mutual respect ! 
In the porticoes of both the little churches I found 
a whole tribe of poor helpless, blind, and crippled 
beggars, doubtless supported by the charity of the Copts, 
and established there en permanence. Besides Moslem 
mosques, some old and grand, some new and splendid, 
and Coptic churches, all poor and mean, and Greek 
churches, gaudy and glaring, — and the dervish's place 
of prayer saddest and most depressing of any, — I was, 
I think, most interested by several visits which I paid 
to a Latin convent of French and German nuns of the 
order of the " Bon Pasteur." Well did they deserve 
their name : for, like good and gentle shepherds, they 
had come out from Europe into the wilderness to find 
some poor little lambs, and train and educate the de- 
graded young girls of the East to something above their 
miserable and sensual lives. Their schools were of 
several sorts and classes, from one in which was a 
niece of the reigning Pasha of Egypt, to another con- 
sisting of sixty destitute orphans, picked up as found- 
lings in the streets. 

I had made acquaintance with three of the nuns on 
our six days' voyage between Malta and Egypt, and 
their simplicity and good-humour through all the incon- 
veniences arising from their humble accommodation on 
board, had excited my interest in them and their work. 

p 



66 



THE CITIES 0E THE PAST. 



True, their convent education had left them with a 
singular collection of facts to discourse upon. Of the 
Virgin's tree at Heliopolis they knew a great deal — of 
Sinai and Moses nothing whatever. Two of them, who 
were French ladies, held animated arguments with the 
third, a little warm-hearted German fraulein, who had 
another set of legends of her own, and would sometimes 
venture to dispute the accuracy of theirs — as, for 
instance, that no one except Christ was ever exactly 
six feet high ! One day, one of the French nuns very 
solemnly told me that if anybody rose at sunrise on 
Trinity Sunday, he would see " toutes les trois personnes 
de la Sainte Trinite ! " " Of course, madame, you have 
done so yourself?" I observed. " Pas precisement^ 
madame ; madame would observe how early the sun 
rose at that season. But it was true, parfaitement 
vrai ! " The little German seemed in profound thought 
for a time, and then said, with the conscious audacity of 
a Strauss, " Je ne le crois pas!" Good little soul! 
When I quoted to her afterwards the pretty little 
German distich she had doubtless known in her child- 
hood — 

Mit Gott fang an, mit Gott hor'auf, 
Das gibt das schonstens lebenslauf — 

she burst into tears, and begged me to come and see 
her, and let her hear a few words of her own tongue 
(badly as I spoke it), in her exile in Cairo. Very soon 
I fulfilled my promise, and found more interest even 
than I expected in my various visits to the convent, 
and conversations with the very clever French superior. 



THE CITY OP VICTORY. 



67 



The house itself was once the palace of some wealthy 
Cairine, and is exceedingly curious. One room in par- 
ticular struck me as being beautiful. It is about forty 
feet long, with deep bays at either end, and one facing 
the centre door. The woodwork is very rich ; fine 
arabesque Mosaics are let into panels in the walls, the 
floor isof inlaid marble. The ceiling rises in the centre 
into a lofty dome, with a smaller dome or lantern within 
it, ascending quite thirty or thirty-five feet from the 
floor, and all the windows are partially filled with rich 
stained glass. Down this splendid chamber are ranged 
the simple little beds of the sixty poor orphans, whom 
the good nuns adopt and teach till they are eighteen 
years old, and afterwards, if possible, settle in marriage. 

Besides the orphan house, I saw a school for girls of 
the upper classes, and also a penitentiary for Christian 
females, all kept by the nuns. The Superior told me 
that the Levantine Christian women are on the whole 
just as low as the Moslem women — just as ignorant, as 
sensual, enslaved, and despised. Till these poor crea- 
tures, one and all, can be made morally free — able to 
control their own ungoverned passions, and learn to 
respect themselves, — there is little use in growing 
indignant at the treatment they receive from their 
husbands. Given a " slave," and the necessary corre- 
lative is, a " master." It is rather remarkable how 
much liberty the Cairine women enjoy in their eternal 
masquerade, which enables them to sit chaffing in the 
bazaars, so completely disguised that their nearest 
relations might stand beside them and never guess their 
identity. 

f 2 



68 



THE CITIES 0E THE PAST. 



Three or four Moslem girls turn Christians every year 
from the teaching of the nuns, and are not persecuted, 
but able easily to obtain employment among Mahometans. 
A Christian girl, on the other hand, ran away from her 
home to the mosque on the citadel, and there pronounced 
the confession of faith, and so became a Moslem. Her 
father managed to seize her and give her in charge to 
the nuns, who answered my inquiries about her rather 
ominously, " A present elle ya mieux." 

JNTow, our walk though Cairo must end, to be resumed 
and pushed farther another day, till there may be 
told the " Adventure of an Unprotected Pemale in the 
Pyramid of Cheops.' ' A curious adventure it was ; but 
magazines, like the Greek language, have only " definite 
articles/' and mine has reached its limits. Procrustes 
was an amiable host compared to the editor who 
bids us " cut out two or three pages anywhere," and 
leaves us to the agonizing task of making sense of the 
remainder. 

Here we are at home, at the locanda of Signor 
Eonchi in Eoman Babylon. A little refreshed from the 
day's excursion by dates and oranges, and delicious 
Kile water, cooled in the earthen "bardak," I go out 
to lie on a sofa on the balcony which overhangs the 
glorious river. There it lies, some sixty feet below, 
rolling on calmly and slowly, and of enormous width 
even here, where I see but one branch of it, while the 
other is hidden behind the Isle of Ehoda. Beautifully 
green and rich is this same island opposite me, and a 
fitting scene, with its palm-groves oveihanging the 
water, for the sweet legend which tells that here the 



THE CITY OF VICTORY. 



69 



daughter of Pharaoh, straying from her royal home in 
neighbouring Memphis, found among those thick rushes 
the little child who was to become the greatest prophet 
of the world save One. A mile farther up the river, at 
the southernmost point of the island, stands the tower 
of the Nilometer ; and everywhere on the island and 
the shores, peeping between the groves of acacia and 
palm, and gardens of oranges, are palaces with their 
flat overhanging roofs still recalling in their forms the 
propylon of the temples of Thebes and Philae. 

The sun is going down beyond the palms of Ehoda ; 
beyond the line of giant cypresses upon the further shore ; 
beyond the burning yellow desert where stand the two 
great Pyramids, clear and sharp against the evening 
sky, — even at this distance the grandest objects in the 
landscape. And as the sun is sinking slowly, there 
comes from some unseen minaret in Babylon the voice 
of the muezzin — 

La Allah, illah Allah ! 

The beautiful call, more solemn than any vesper bell, 
echoes over the water ; and the poor fishermen, whose 
boats are moored for the night under my balcony, leave 
the simple preparations for their evening meal, and 
spread their carpets on their decks, and bare their feet, 
and kneel down reverently for their sunset prayer. 
There is a great hush, and a golden silence, and the sun 
goes down in a sea of glory — " a bed of daffodil sky," — 
and the pyramids and cypresses, and palm-groves stand 
out darker and darker ; and lamps are lighted in barge 
and palace all down the great river, even to where 



70 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



Memphis stood; and the stars come out one by one 
overhead, and the young crescent moon with the earth- 
light filling her horn, hangs near and clear, and seeming 
as if she were descending to earth from the infinite 
depths of the heavens beyond: — Isis brooding over 
the " beloved land of Egypt." 



THE ETERNAl CITY. 



71 



THE ETERNAL CITY. 

It happened to us once to attend the examination of 
an infant school conducted by ladies more benevolent in 
purpose than sagacious in the science of managing small 
children. Several hours were spent in desultory inqui- 
ries, repetitions of lessons, and investigation of copy- 
books. Finally, the time for dinner arrived, while the 
children were singing the third or fourth of a collection 
of somewhat lugubrious although edifying hymns. 

At this crisis the attendants brought into the school- 
room the trays covered with the bread and soup, and of 
course all eyes were instantly fixed in their direction 
with longing aspirations. Having once been a child 
myself (a claim which, I observe, is always stated as 
peculiar and remarkable), I ventured to whisper that 
the three remaining verses might be dispensed with, and 
more interesting researches pursued than that of the 
abstract question, 

Why should I deprive my neighbour 
Of his goods against his will ? 

But I was wrong. Hymns must be finished, and chil- 
dren taught to restrain unruly appetites ; and so another 
and another verse was sung, slower and slower, and 
lower and lower, as the little voices dropped out of the 



72 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



chorus in weariness or were fascinated into silence by 
the spectacle of the dinner. At last it ended ; but there 
was to be another song, and this was to be something 
most diverting and delightful. The dear children liked 
it so much ! It was a species of parody on "Mdnoddin," 
and at each verse the singers appeared actively engaged 
in humming, digging, washing, or reading, repeating in 
chorus — 

And we're all washing, wash, wash, washing ; 
We're all washing, so happy and so gay. 

Or, 

We're all spelling, spell, spell, spelling, 
So happy and so gay. 

The first verse was got over passably. At the second, 
" so happy and so gay " had become pianissimo. At 
the third it was a whine ; and at the fourth a wail. 
At the fifth several little faces had tears running down 
them. Finally, 

So hap-happy and so g-a-a-a-y ! 
ended in a regular roar of crying of half the poor little 
babies in chorus. 

It appears to me that at this moment the Papal 
Government is treating its subjects much as we did 
those hungry children. It is saying to them, " Sing, 
my pretty dears; sing and play, and show your kind 
visitors that you are all ' so happy and so gay.' Don't 
look at the bread-basket just now ; don't think whether 
your are tired of sitting in the stocks. Play away; 
sing your pretty songs. We'll lead you ourselves : 

We're all playing, play, play, playing ; 

We're all playing, so happy and so gay." 



THE ETERNAL CITY. 



73 



"Who has not heard of a Boman Carnival ? "What a 
scene of mirth and sport it is ! Such files and files of 
carriages laden with nobles and burgesses hardly able 
to move through the long Corso, crowded with brilliant 
masqueraders ; while above, from every balcony, hang 
garlands and banners, and thousands of fair hands 
scattering choicest confetti and delicious flowers on 
favoured knights below. Oh, gallant, joyous scene — 
oh, happy people of Eome — oh, paternal and pontifical 
government, which sanctions it all ; nay, throws a halo 
of sacerdotal benediction over the scene ! One can 
almost fancy one sees an indulgent grandpapa watching 
the children playing blindman's buff at Christmas. 
"Play, my little ones — play away; grandpapa likes to 
see you amuse youselves, provided you don't tread on 
his gouty toes. Play away, all of you, 1 so happy and 
so gay.' " 

And so the Eoman Government makes ample prepa- 
ration for the celebration of Carnival this blessed year 
1862. And first the walls are placarded with an 
Editto of laws for the proper observance of the cere- 
mony ; and the same Editto forms the leading article 
of the newspaper of Eome — to wit, the poor little 
Giornale di Roma, containing about as much printed 
matter as two columns of the Times. Awful is the appear- 
ance of this edict. We saw it one day pasted among the 
five or six placards which are about the utmost number 
to be ever seen posted on walls anywhere in Eome. 
There it was alongside of " La Santa Casa di Loretta," 
and "II Principio del Autorita," and two bills of 
theatres, and the advertisement of a lost muff. There 



74 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



was the ukase in thirty articles. Viewing the deep solem- 
nity of the subject, the discrimination needful between 
confetti (lollypops), lawful and unlawful, flowers which 
may be flung, and onions which must be withheld, it is 
almost a pity there were not thirty-nine " Articles of 
the Carnival." Not to be profane, when we stood in 
the street to read the solemn words with which the 
decree opens its metaphysical depth of discrimination 
in the middle, and the awful threats of arrest and con- 
demnation with which it concludes, — we could not but 
think that a certain celebrated symbol had been present 
to the mind of the priestly or prelatical framer of the 
Editto. 6 6 Whoever wishes to enj oy the Carnival must, ' ' 
&c. "We must present a digest of this new Roman law 
— not exactly a law after the fashion of the Twelve 
Tables, the Pandects of Theodosius, or the novels of 
Justinian. 

Rome, 22 Febbraio. 
Edict concerning the Carnival. 

Antonio Matteuci, Vice- Chamberlain di S.R.C.,and Director- 
General of Police. 
With the highest authorization, the under-mentioned diver- 
sions are permitted in the approaching Carnival under the 
following regulations : — 

1. On the 22nd, 24th, 25th, 26th, and 27th of February, and 
on the 1st, 3rd, and 4th of March, the horse-races will take 
place. 

2. In these days disguises are allowed, but it is forbidden 
either to mask the face or to disguise it in any way, either with 
false bands or dyes, or in any other way. 

3. It is forbidden to wear as disguise the distinctive cos- 
tumes of the military or of ecclesiastics. 



THE ETEENAL CITY. 



75 



4. It is forbidden to carry arms. (The reason for these two 
regulations is sufficiently obvious. Three more articles follow 
concerning disguises and the hours for wearing them, and then 
come these solemn decrees.) 

8. It is permitted to throw confetti (comfits) of sugar. 
These, however, must be of two species only ; to wit, of 
aniseed and of little cinnamon drops, and precisely those which 
are known under the name of " Confettura minuta." It is not 
allowed to throw any other qualities. 

9. It is allowed, however (notwithstanding Act 8), to use 
comfits of aniseed, millet, carraways, grape seeds and melon 
seeds, covered with paste of flour. They must notwithstanding 
be comformable to the Confettura minuta, and be made in a 
pan (!). 

10. Therefore expressly forbidden are comfits of every other 
kind, and particularly those of lime (the only kind ever used 
now, as all the world knows), chalk, white lead, mortar, or any 
other material whatever. 

] 1. The retail sale of comfits aforesaid, can only be carried 
on by those who have obtained the written gratuitous (!) per- 
mission of the Assessor- General of Police. The seller must 
carry this written permission to show it on every demand. 

12. The sale aforesaid can only be made along the Corso and 
in the Piazzas designated by the municipal authorities. 

13. The comfits aforesaid can only be permitted to be 
thrown in discreet quantity, and without impetuosity (senza 
imjpeto), not to give offence. 

14. It is hereby forbidden to throw comfits with a spoon or 
ladle, or with shovels, plates, or canisters, or with any other 
instrument suited to render more immoderate or violent and 
offensive the vibration thereof. 

15. It is hereby forbidden also to throw flour, mortar, lime, 
or other similar materials ; or to fling eggs, apples of any 
kind, or money of any description. 

16. It is permitted to throw flowers, whether separate or in 



76 



THE CITIES OP THE PAST. 



small nosegays, provided always that the stalks be short and 
not heavy. 

17. The sellers of flowers must be authorized by written 
license, which will be granted gratis by the Assessor- General 
of Police. Also, such sale of flowers must take place only 
along the Corso and in the Piazza designated by the municipal 
authorities. Every seller of flowers must keep this written 
permission to exhibit on demand. 

18. It is forbidden to fling comfits or flowers at the soldiers 
on service. The offender will be immediately arrested. 

19. Carriages will enter the Corso only by the Piazza del 
Popolo, San Lorenzo, and of Yenezia ; also by the Yia Condotti 
and the Arco dei Carbognari. 

20. In the drive in the Corso carriages must keep strictly 
their proper lines, and must only turn at each end of the 
Corso. 

21. From mid-day to Ave-Maria no saddle-horses, nor 
carriages drawn by one horse, can have any entrance into the 
Corso whatsoever. 

22. At the aforesaid hours shall be admitted into the Corso 
only carriages with two horses. The said carriages must be of 
sufficient cleanliness and elegance. The public force will im- 
mediately drive out of the Corso any carriage which shall be 
indecent (!) or drawn by one horse. 

Seven Articles more describe the laws of carriages, 
and finally, 

Art. 30. Any action whatsoever, or expression whatsoever, 
which shall be injurious or criminal, and any disobedience to 
the orders of the public force, will immediately draw upon the 
offender the execution of the laws. 

Given at our residence, 8 Feb., 1862. 

Antonio Matteuci. 

There is something impressive about this edict, which 
throws a solemnity even over the subject of iollypops, 



TEE ETEE^AL CITY. 



77 



and adds an importance to the status of nosegays. 
Imagine, reader, the streets of London decorated 
with a parallel Proclamation, and the leading article 
in the Times dedicated to its republication. 

y. e. 

(The Royal Arms.) 
Whereas, &c. &c. &c. 

And be it enacted, that comfits may be thrown, provided 
always that aforesaid comfits be of the species denominated 
candy, sugar-plums, lollypops, barley sugar, stunners, kisses, or 
acidulated drops. 

But in anywise notwithstanding be it herein forbidden to 
throw all those and several comfits denominated bull's-eyes, 
teetotal drops, liquorice, or cinnamon-stick. 

And be it provided that no sale of such candy, sugar-plums, 
lollypops, peppermint drops, or stunners, shall in anywise take 
place in London during the season aforesaid, unless by persons 
duly authorized by her Majesty's Superintendent- General of 
Police, and bearing his sign-manual, graciously affording such 
permission. 

Truly we seem to have travelled into a land of chil- 
dren, where edicts like these could be promulgated 
without ridicule. 

In addition to the edict, the other preparations made 
for the Carnival consisted in wooden scaffoldings in the 
Piazza del Popolo for the witnesses of the horse-race, 
and the hanging of a moderate quantity of red and 
white calico of more than doubtful cleanliness over the 
balconies of the houses in the Cor so. In the Piazza di 
Yenezia the seats were superbly covered by filthy old 
tapestries. Between two and three o'clock the Carnival 
opened. But before we station ourselves to view this 



78 



THE CITIES 0E THE PAST. 



" festive scene/ ' let us turn to another side of the 
picture. All is by no means gold that glitters in Rome, 
Preparations for a festa generally involve something 
serious underneath — perhaps the life and death struggle 
of a nation writhing like Laocoon under the double 
snakes of secular and spiritual tyranny. What do the 
Romans themselves think of their Carnival this year ? 
Usually it is difficult or impossible for us to get a chance 
of knowing the real feelings of the people. Under the 
iron censorship of the press, public sentiment is actually 
stifled down, and the nation seems to lie gasping in an 
atmosphere of doubt and falsehood. But for once we 
have ready access to the heart of the people ; we have 
the words of their National Committee, and (as I shall 
show presently) those words were ratified by the action 
of twenty thousand men. 

The National Committee of Rome is a remarkable 
body, which has succeeded in keeping itself undiscovered, 
and in issuing its addresses on all important occasions 
for some years back.* The discovery of its private 
press is one of the chief objects of Antonelli's ambition, 
and the other day he thought he had attained his end. 
He had obtained information that it was at work in one 
of the endless ramifications of chambers in the colossal 
hospital of San Spirito, and accordingly a large body of 
troops suddenly surrounded the building, and an inves- 
tigation was commenced. But Antonelli had reckoned 

* I have heard a Eoman quote, regarding its undiscoverable 
identity, Metastasio's lines about the Phoenix — 
" Che vi sia ciascun lo dice, 
Dove sia nessun lo sa." 



THE ETEENAL CITY. 



79 



without his host. Monsignor Narducci, who is now the 
supreme head of San Spirit o, considered himself insulted 
by the invasion of his domain ; and asserting his un- 
questionable prerogative, announced that the Pope's 
autograph order must be produced before he would 
permit any search whatever to be made in the hospital. 
Before this order could be obtained two or three hours 
had elapsed ; and when it was presented to ]N"arducci 
and the search effected, all that can be said is, that the 
printing press was not found ! Whether it ever was 
there, is another matter. Here, at all events, is one of 
its later productions, and truly it forms a marvellous 
contrast to the childish edict I have just quoted as the 
authoritative decree of the Pontifical Government. He 
who is familiarly acquainted with the verbiage, the 
forcible feebleness and bombast of ordinary Italian com- 
position in our time, cannot fail to be struck with the 
difference, if it were only in style of writing, of this 
manly and powerful paper. It would seem usually as 
if the prohibition of the discussion of all serious matters 
in Italian society — in fact, of all political and religious 
conversation whatever — had not only gradually rendered 
the minds of men and women more and more superficial 
and trifling, but made the very language thinner and more 
diluted, to supply a fitting vehicle for the tittle-tattle 
about dress and the opera, to which social intercourse 
is pretty nearly limited. The descendants of those 
Romans whose strong concise tongue could express six 
words of an English epitaph in three, have watered 
down Latin and the elder Italian into a language 
which would rather require twelve words for our 



80 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



six. Italian conversation, cumbered with forms, and 
demanding for polite usage endless drawling of 
syllables and clear pronunciation of final vowels, is 
indeed sweet and sonorous ; but it lacks altogether the 
more serviceable qualities of language, the brilliant 
epigram of glittering French, the metaphysical subtlety 
of German, or the energy and force of our own Anglo- 
Saxon. On the one side it is all feebleness and verbiage, 
on the other all bombast. If an Italian newspaper wishes 
to say that a report is false, it says that it is " piena- 
mente inesatta." If a pro -Papal pamphlet desires to 
rebuke the Man of the Age (a sort of substitute for and 
representative of the Man of Sin), it calls him in two pages 
a Nimrod, a Tantalus, a Titan, a Spartacus, a Critias, an 
Enomaus, a Curbicus, an Enceladus, an Ephialtes, and 
a son of Edom !"* Compared with all this rubbish, the 
Address of the ISTational Committee concerning the Car- 
nival is remarkable in every way. I shall give it in 
the original as well as in translation, that my assertions 
respecting its style may be verified. But there is much 
more than a question of composition involved. Read 
here in old Rome, dwelling between the memorials 
of ancient glory to which it appeals, and the manifes- 
tations of modern priestly misrule and the tawdry 
fooleries of the Carnival— between the Eorum on one 
side and the Corso on the other — these words sound 
solemn and grand as a trumpet-call. We see not from 

* II Principio deV Autoritd e le Tenderize del Secolo ; wherein 
it proved, — 1st, that authority is the best thing in the world ; 
2nd, that the Papacy exercises less authority than any other 
sect ; 3rd, ergo, that Popery is the best thing in the world. 



THE ETERNAL CITY. 



81 



whence they come. It is a vox et prater ea nihil ; but a 
voice which tells us Eome is not dead— a noble voice, 
worthy of the land and of the cause. So, then, the 
children will not all play at word of command ? They 
will not al] sing with their feet in the stocks, or dance 
when bidden at the point of the bayonet ? — 

Eo^iani ! 

II Governo Pontefice vuole che voi vi aiete spettacolo di voi 
stessi nel prossimo Carnovale frequentando il Corso e i Festini 
per aver nuova occasione di mentire e di ripettere che voi siete 
felicissimi di esser gli sudditi. Ma il Governo Pontefice non 
trovera certo fra i veri figli di Roma che si prester a dar colore 
di verita all' impudente menzogna. 

Mentre la sua ostinata cupidiglia di potere, toglie ancora a 
Roma quella prosperity onde sara lieta la capitale d' Italia, 
mentre tante oneste famiglie piangono ancora i lori cari, quale 
in esilio, quale in carcere, quale privato d'impiego da una trista 
censura, mentre di qnesti vittime s'accresce ogni giorno il 
numero, mentre invece di dar pane al popolo si scialacqna il 
danaro per riordinare il brigantaggio Borbonico, il Governo 
Pontefice cinvita a far Baccanali perche l'Europa ci creda o 
stupidi o contenti, e lasce cosi prolungere la nostra sciagnra. 
E nn amara derisione, e il popolo Romano tollera con dignita i 
propri mali, ma non si lascia deridere. 

II Corso ed i Festini saranno frequent ati dei Borbonici che 
attendano la nuova stazione per tornare agl' incendio ed alle 
rapine del brigantaggio, — de' Zouavi, e dei sgherri ai quali de 
Merode permitte di mutar tante fogge di vestiario quanto son 
le comparse che debbono fare ; da quegli impiegati, o pusilla- 
nimi, o disonesti, o ignoranti che temono piu un occhio bieco 
de' loro attuale padroni che non l'avvenire delle loro famiglie ; 
del servido rame prelatizio e dagli affigliati dei Gesuiti che in 
grazia del poter temporale hanno convertito oggi in indulgenza, 

Gr 



82 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



quella clie prima vietavano come peccato. A tatti fara la 
spesa l'obolo di S. Pietro e il prestito de' cinque milioni che 
1'oneste Bourbon e va ora emettando in cartelle da 100 franchi 
stampata a Roma colla data di Gaeta ; prestito cosi immorale 
che certo il Governo Italiano non sara mai si stolto da riconos- 
cere. 

Romani ! Lasciate pure che frequenti il Corso ed i Festini 
chi si senta degno di si nobile e csalta compagnia ! Per chi 
ama il proprio decoro, per chi si senta all' altezza delle sorti 
che la Providenza ha riserbata all' Italia ! Alia sua capitale, 
l'antico Foro di Roma ed ogni altro luogo dove sono memorie 
della nostra antica grandezza ofFre gioie degna di lui. La 
ricordando quanto furono grandi nostri maggiori ha d'onde 
rallegrarsi il vero cittadino di Roma poiche vi trova le ragione 
del vicino nostro risorgimento dopo tanti secoli di sventure ! 

Yiva il Pontefice non Re ! 

Viva Yittorio Emanuele II. Re d'ltalia ! 20 Febbraio, 1862. 

Il Comitato Nazionale Romano. 

Romans ! 

The Pontifical Government desires that you should lend 
yourselves to form the spectacle of the approaching Carnival 
by frequenting the Corso and the Festini ; to the end that it 
may have the opportunity of repeating the falsehood that you 
are extremely happy under its subjection. Assuredly, how- 
ever, the Pontifical Government will not find among the true 
sons of Rome any who will lend themselves to give a colour to 
this impudent lie. 

While its obstinate love of power still deprives Rome of that 
prosperity which the capital of Italy would enjoy, while so 
many honourable families still weep their beloved ones dis- 
graced, exiled, or imprisoned, while the number of these 
victims increases every day, while, instead of supplying bread 
to the people, the public money is drained to reorganize the 
Bourbon brigandage ; the Pontifical Government invites us to 



THE ETERNAL CITY. 



83 



play the Bacchanalians, that Europe may believe us either 
stupid or contented, and thus may allow our misery to be pro- 
longed. It is bitter mockery ; and, though the Boman people 
know how to support their misfortunes with dignity, they will 
not allow themselves to be turned into derision. 

The Corso and the Festini will be frequented by Bourbonites 
who await the coming summer to renew the incendiarism and 
rapine of banditti — by Zouaves and Sbirri, whom de Merode 
allows to wear uniforms as various as are their offices ; by 
those employes, either pusillanimous, or dishonest, or ignorant, 
who fear more a cold look from their present masters than 
they care for the future of their families ; by the servile 
followers of the clergy, and by the affiliated brood of those 
Jesuits who, in gratitude to the temporal power, now treat 
with indulgence what they formerly condemned as sinful. For 
all these the cost will be defrayed by Peter's pence, and by the 
five millions which the honourable Bourbon is now issuing in 
bills of one hundred francs, stamped at Borne with the date of 
Gaeta; a loan so dishonest that assuredly the Boman Govern- 
ment will never be so foolish as to recognize it. 

Bomans! Leave it to those who feel themselves worthy of 
such noble and exalted company to frequent the Corso and the 
masquerades ; for him who respects himself — for him who feels 
himself at the level of that high destiny which Providence 
reserves for Italy and her capital — for him let the ancient 
Forum of Borne, and every other spot where linger the me- 
mories of our former greatness, offer pleasures worthy of his 
acceptance. There, remembering how grand were the achieve- 
ments of our forefathers, the true citizen of Borne will rejoice, 
for he will find therein the promise of our approaching resur- 
rection, after so many centuries of misfortune. 

Viva the Pontiff, not the King ! 

Viva Vittorio Emanuele, King of Italy ! 

The National Committee or Bome. 
Rome, February 20, 1862. 

G 2 



84 



THE CITIES OP THE PAST. 



Thus, then, the question is proposed. "Will the 
Romans attend their Carnival, and show themselves 
before Europe as if happy and contented in their fetters ? 
Or will they who for ages have been stigmatized as the 
nation abandoned to the love of public games, and ask- 
ing not for liberty or glory but only for " Paneni et 
Cir censes" — will they have the strength to keep away 
from the one great festival of the year, and, turning 
their backs on the gay and brilliant Corso, go and 
spend their hours of holiday in wandering round the 
solemn ruins of the Forum, knowing that by so doing 
they will be earning the deadly enmity of their mas- 
ters, who will mark them down, man for man, on their 
black books, for the unrelenting hatred of a govern- 
ment of priests? Taking this great problem in our 
minds for solution, it became a matter of intense in- 
terest to see whether the Carnival would or would not 
be, this year, able to keep up its old popularity; and 
to judge who, and of what classes were those who fre- 
quented, and those who quitted it. 

To comprehend the character of the scene, however, 
it was quite necessary to be acquainted with the usual 
display of festivity and splendour at a Roman Carnival, 
the multitudes of people and carriages who habitually 
thronged the streets during the week, and the spirit of 
exuberant gaiety and rejoicing which possessed them, 
almost to insanity, from the haughty Princes of Rome 
to the poorest of the mob. Let the following picture 
from Andersen's Improvisator e aid those who have never 
been present at such a scene to form some notion of 
it :— 



THE ETERNAL CITY. 



85 



The Carnival was all my thought. I went early in the 
morning to the Piazza del Popolo, that I might see the pre- 
parations for the races, and walked in the evening up and down 
the Corso to notice the gay Carnival dresses which were hung 
out, figures with masks, and in full costume. I hired the dress 
of an advocate, as being one of the merriest characters, and 
scarcely slept the whole night, that I might think over and 
regularly study my part. 

The next day seemed to me like a festival ; I was as happy 
as a child. All round about in the side streets the comfit- 
sellers set up their booths and tables, and displayed their 
gay wares. The Corso was swept, and gay carpets were 
hung from all the windows. The balconies were filled with 
foreigners of rank, the senator sat in purple, upon a throne of 
velvet ; pretty little pages, with feathers in their velvet caps, 
stood before the Papal Swiss guard. Then came in a crowd of 
the most aged Jews, who kneeled down before the senator, and 
prayed for permission to live yet a year longer in Rome. The 
senator gave a gracious nod (the old custom of setting the foot 
upon the shoulder of the applicant was done away with), rose 
up amid a flourish of music, in procession, and, descending the 
steps, entered his magnificent carriage ; and thus was the Car- 
nival opened. The great bell of the Capitol rang for gladness, 
and I sped home quickly that I might assume my advocate's 
dress. 

With much self-satisfaction I hastened down the street, 
where a throng of masks already saluted me. They were poor 
working people, who on these days acted like the richest 
nobility ; their whole finery was the most original, and at the 
same time the cheapest in the world. They wore over their 
ordinary dress a coarse shirt stuck all over with lemon-peel 
which was to represent great buttons, a bunch of green salad 
on their shoulders and sleeves, a wig of fennel, and great 
spectacles cut out of orange-peel. 

I threatened them all with actions at law, showed them in 
my book of laws the regulations which forbade such luxurious- 



86 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



ness in dress as theirs, and then, applauded by them all, 
hastened away down the Corso, which was changed from a 
street to a masquerade ball. From all the windows, and round 
all the balconies and boxes erected for the occasion, were hung 
bright-coloured carpets. All along by the house-sides stood 
an infinite number of chairs, " excellent places to see from," 
as those who had them to let declared. Carriages followed 
carriages, for the greatest part filled with masks, in two long 
rows ; the one up, the other down. Some of these had even 
their wheels covered with laurel-twigs, the whole seeming like 
a moving pleasure-house ; and amid these thronged the merry 
human crowd. All windows were filled with spectators. . 
On the Piazzi Colonna was a band of music. The merry 
doctors and shepherdesses danced joyously around, even in the 
midst of the single troop of soldiers which, to preserve order* 
mechanically walked up and down the street among the 
carriages and the throng of human beings. Here I again began 
a profound speech, but there came up a writer, and then it was 
all over with me, for his attendant who ran before him with a 
great bell, jingled it so before my ears that I could not even 
hear my own words. At that moment, also, was heard the 
cannon shot, which was the signal that all carriages must leave 
the streets, and that the Carnival was over for that day. . . 
On the last day of the Carnival a sign was made which an- 
nounced that all order in driving was at an end, and the 
glorious Moccolo, the splendid finale of the Carnival, had begun. 
The carriages now drove one amongst another, the confusion 
and the tumult became still greater, the darkness increased 
every minute, and every one lighted his little candle, some 
whole bundles of them. In every window lights were placed ; 
houses and carriages in the quiet, glorious evening looked as 
if scattered over with these glimmering stars. Paper lan- 
terns and pyramids of light swung upon tall poles across the 
street. Every one was endeavouring to protect his own light 
and to extinguish his neighbour's, whilst the cry " Sia ammaz- 
zato chi non porta moccolo !" sounded forth with increasing 



THE ETERNAL CITY. 



87 



wildness. . . A stranger who has never witnessed the 
scene can form no idea of the deafening noise, the tumult, and 
the throng. The air is thick and warm with the mass of 
human beings and the burning lights,* 

Such was the Roman Carnival but a few years ago. 
Let us now judge what it was this same year of 1862. 
Soon after two o'clock on Saturday, the 22nd of Febru- 
ary, we took our places in a balcony admirably situated 
near the centre of the Corso, and enabling us to judge 
tolerably well of the whole scene. The appearance of 
the street was pretty enough, though not very remark- 
able. The Corso (as all the world knows) is exceedingly 
narrow, but so long as to form the main artery of mo- 
dern Eome. The irregularity of the architecture of the 
tall houses on either side, and the interruptions of a 
few splendid palaces, and of the Piazza Colonna, and 
Piazza San Carlo, give a certain degree of picturesque- 
ness to the long perspective. Nearer inspection, how- 
ever, does not exalt the scene : the pavement is intoler- 
able, the trottoirs too narrow and broken to be of use, 
and the shops utterly mean and miserable, the best of 
them such as may be found in the second-rate streets of 
our third-rate towns. The monopolies granted by the 
Pontifical Government, and the thousand vexatious fet- 
ters on trade of all kinds, have reduced Roman commerce 
to a state bordering on inanition, from which it is only 
saved by the manufacture of the three or four specialities 
purchased by English visitors — namely, jewellery, copies 

* The Irrvprovisatore, by Andersen, chapters ix. and x. 



88 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



of pictures, and Eoman scarfs. Accordingly, except the 
shops for these articles, which are just passably good, 
and two or three cafes, there are actually none but 
wretched little bottegghe of native comestibles or foreign 
clothing. Plate-glass is nearly unknown in Eome, or 
the commonest decorations of the shops in our provin- 
cial towns. Thus the view of this celebrated Corso, 
even with the advantages of a glorious day and all the 
white and red draperies aforesaid, presented at least 
only the equivalent of one of the humbler streets of 
Paris twenty years ago. To one who had witnessed, 
as I had done, the magnificent scene when Florence 
welcomed her chosen king in April, 1860, the idea of 
this being a great " Festa" was somewhat ridiculous. 
How the grand old city blossomed out that day in tri- 
colours and garlands and hangings and banners beyond 
all number, till the beautiful streets flamed with red, 
white, and green ! How triumphal arches, some grace- 
ful, some splendid, rose up all over the king's path ! 
How the free people and their own free soldiers, all one 
and in perfect unity and order, lined the way and filled 
the scaffoldings and balconies and windows and roofs ! 
How at last, when the cannon sounded, and we knew 
the king had reached the gates, there was a great hush, 
and then, as he rode in between Eicasoli and Cavour, 
the rough, blunt soldier bending his head, more in 
human emotion than in regal courtesy, how there burst 
from the people's heart one low, deep cry of welcome, 
unlike anvthing my ears ever heard before ; and when 
he had swept by, how we saw each other's faces, pale 
and tearful, foreigners that we were, while the Tuscans 



THE ETEEXAL CITY. 



89 



wept, and women fainted. And at night, how Florence 
shone one blaze of lamps — the poorest and meanest 
houses, each with its light in every window, while the 
Pitti and the Palazzo Yecchio and the Campanile were 
drawn in lines of name against the evening sky, andPiesole 
and Bellosguardo, and all down the Yal d'Arno, and up 
far away into the hollows of the Apennines, sparkled 
the countless lights ; and the marble Duomo blazed over 
all like a crown of fire offered by that rejoicing land to 
heaven. That was an Italian festival. But a Roman 
Carnival, tawdry and paltry and childish, commanded 
by priests, and kept in line by Prench bayonets, — shall 
we call this a Pesta also ? 

The first day of a Carnival is always said to be the 
least showy, therefore we deemed that the display on 
the 22nd Pebruary was hardly a fair specimen of what 
was to follow. As it proved, however, it was nearly as 
good as any other day, and better than many ; the de- 
scription of it, therefore, may stand for the rest. Yery 
curious was the study of the crowd which was collected 
to await the opening. Taking men, women, and chil- 
dren together, at least half of the whole number were 
soldiers, Prench and Italian. Yast numbers of these, 
and of mounted gendarmes, were in service and under 
arms ; drawn swords and flashing bayonets forming a 
large share of the brilliancy of this harmonious festival. 
Besides these were 1 soldiers of the line, zouaves, and 
dismounted hussars mingling with the crowd, in a pro- 
portion which seemed fabulous. Among them, con- 
spicuous by their spinach-and-eggs uniforms, were the 
wretched remains of the Irish Brigade. Nothing can 



90 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



be more absurd and pitiful than the condition of these 
poor fellows. Misled by their only instructors, the 
priests, and tired with an enthusiasm precisely resem- 
bling in character that which precipitated half Europe 
upon the Holy Land six centuries ago, these Irishmen 
arrived here in Home, believing that they were to be 
the bulwark of the Church, the defenders of the triple 
crown of " God's vicegerent on earth.' ' After a few 
months of privation, disaster, and disgrace, the greater 
number of them, with their chief (worthy of a better 
cause), returned home in every stage of destitution. 
Only a small band remained, and they are to be seen 
everywhere throughout Eome, loitering about by twos 
and threes, their hands stuck in the pockets of their 
peg-top trousers, the yellow gaiter or white stocking 
displaying in full the huge Milesian foot, and the 
honest red Irish face looking utterly out of place under 
the Frenchified foraging cap, and amid the crowd of 
sallow and dark- eyed Italians. 

Beside the soldiers, the Carnival seemed chiefly to be 
maintained by a numerous society of small boys pro- 
fiting by the holidays of the season to pursue a serious 
traffic in second-hand nosegays and confetti swept up 
out of the dust. Imagine not, oh reader ! that these 
Koman urchins are in any way to be likened to the all 
too-sagacious gamins of Paris, or the facetious raga- 
muffin of London, whose exuberant fun has been im- 
mortalized by Punch. Often have I thought, while visit- 
ing their schools or watching in the streets these poor 
little dull, slow-moving Italian children, how strange 
was the difference between them and the sharp, naughty, 



THE ETEPJS"AE CITY. 



91 



untameable, but altogether amusing and hopeful, " City 
Arabs" of our English ragged schools. Ask these 
Roman boys a question in theology, and they will 
patter away as glibly as possible an answer out of their 
catechisms. Tell them to say grace, and they will 
gabble Latin for ten minutes ; make them write, and 
they will indite an Italian equivalent for the abomin- 
able proverb that " honesty is the best policy,'' in 
miraculous text. But try and take to these children, 
or watch them at their play, and all is dulness and 
stupidity. ]N"o rushing, scampering out of school, with 
impromptu " leap-frog" over their companions; no 
holloaing, shouting, laughing, climbing on perilous 
walls for peril's sake, and tumbling head over heels 
solely to reverse the natural order of things. Still less 
will you receive any such queer, droll answers to your 
questions as those you will hear every day in our great 
towns. " Conscience, ma'am ?" said a City Arab to 
me once. " You wants to know what's a conscience ? 
Conscience is a thing a gemman hasn't got who, when 
a boy finds his pocket-book, and gives it back, doesn't 
give him sixpence !" Lives there the Roman boy who 
could give such a reply ? Poor little urchins, they are 
swathed up in infancy in their atrocious swaddling 
clothes, unable to move a limb for the first six months 
of their lives. Then they are bundled up in stupid, 
heavy clothes ; and, when they grow older, ten to one 
but they go to some priest's school and wear long cloth 
garments trailing to the ground. The physical check 
is completed by mental restraint ; and the result is 
that a Roman boy of twelve or fourteen is about the 



92 



THE CITIES OP THE PAST. 



dullest mortal under the sun. There they are, this 
Carnival holiday, not laughing, playing, or attempting 
to dress themselves up as our poorest children do for 
May-day or Guy Faux. "So ; the often-inculcated su- 
preme virtue of prudence is in full action already, and 
they have one and all an eye to the main chance, and 
to that only. As the nosegays fall from carriages and 
balconies, thrown by unskilful hands, half a dozen boys 
dart at them, and the nearest, having seized his prize, 
proceeds immediately, quite gravely, and as a matter of 
business, to offer it at the same or the next balcony for 
two bajocchi. Likewise when the dirty lime confetti 
have been thrown in sufficient numbers to form a 
sprinkling on the ground, the astute juveniles proceed 
to sweep them up carefully, and then present them, 
dust and all, for further use — price one bajoccho, or 
half a bajoccho. There is very little scrambling in all 
this; no shouting, no laughing, no boyish triumph in 
success : it is a profession, as professionally pursued as 
that of the poor wretches who nightly fill their baskets 
out of the heaps of filth which the sublime sanitary 
arrangements of Rome establish permanently at every 
corner, with their title of " Immondezzaio" printed 
over them (notwithstanding which invitation the Ro- 
mans will by no means refrain from throwing their 
rubbish everywhere else with equal liberty). 

Besides soldiers and boys, and a few women of very 
doubtful appearance, the Corso contains about a fourth 
proportion of men of the lowest orders. They seem to 
be workmen of the humbler classes, artisans of poor 
trades, labourers, and the very weak Italian equivalent 



THE ETEEXAL CITY. 



93 



for our "roughs." Yery few are moderately well 
dressed ; hut even these do not seem to he enjoying the 
Carnival, and why they come to the Corso at all is a 
mystery. They saunter up and down, now and then 
looking with a sort of patronizing pity on the " fores- 
tieri," who think they are making a true Eoman Car- 
nival; hut as to taking any part themselves heyond 
sauntering, and staring, and smoking had tobacco, it is 
manifestly out of their thoughts. 

But are there no masqueraders, no fancy dresses ? 
Among the people on foot there is about one in every 
three or four hundred, — not masked, that is forbidden, 
but in a calico domino (good English calico, we are 
told, price two scudi and a half), or now and then 
with an attempt at the dress of a sailor or a harlequin. 
These masqueraders try to obtain attention by strutting 
about and hitting passengers with their various missiles, 
but nobody seems very fond of them. Perhaps there is 
some good reason. As we see one of the most con- 
spicuous come up the Corso towards our balcony, we all 
exclaim spontaneously, "Why, that is our spy; the 
man who dodges us everywhere." At the same mo- 
ment he sees us, and sees that we see him, aud instantly 
wheels about and betakes himself in the opposite direc- 
tion. 

But there are the balconies, and all up and down the 
long street may be seen ladies and gentlemen filling 
these projecting standing-places, and also occupying a 
few little niches into which the shop-fronts have inge- 
niously been transformed. Who are they — what are 
they? No. 1. Primo piano, English; 2nd piano, 



94 



THE CITIES 0E THE PAST. 



ditto; 3rd piano, Codini and priests. No. 2. 1st piano, 
English ; 2nd piano, ditto ; 3rd piano, Neapolitans ; 
4th piano, housemaids; 5th piano (on the roof), an 
English clergyman and his family, hoping to escape 
observation. No. 3. 1st piano, a Neapolitan noble 
family ; 2nd piano, shut up ; 3rd piano, English ;— and 
so on, and so on. Precisely the same holds good with 
the carriages. Where by some accident they are not 
occupied by English ladies and gentlemen, they are 
filled by Neapolitan refugees or else by the lowest dregs 
of the populace. It is impossible to attach any sort of 
confidence to the reports circulating in Rome. It is 
necessary for an Englishman to live for some months in 
a country where there is no newspaper worth the name, 
no public courts of justice, no coroner's inquest, to be 
be able to form a conception of the ignorance in which 
we live in Rome of the most important events or fatal 
catastrophes which may happen at our very doors. If 
no English friend has chanced to witness the occurrence 
with his own eyes, we are all in the dark for ever. 
Thus I state the reports current about the Carnival 
with no pretension to exactitude, only demanding confi- 
dence in the matters I report from my own personal 
observation. But there certainly appeared ground for 
the popular belief, that at the close of the Carnival, 
when its failure was becoming too obvious, the Govern- 
ment actually took a number of criminals out of the 
gaols and sent them in dominos, driving up and down 
the Cor so, to make an appearance of numbers. The 
behaviour of marjy of the ruffians who filled the ve- 
hicles, could not certainly have been worse had such 



THE ETERNAL CITY. 



95 



been the case. Bough, rude, and coarse, one hardly 
knew from what part of courteous Italy they could have 
come, unless Naples and her brigands supplied them. 
It will have been noticed in the ridiculous edict I have 
quoted, that it is forbidden to throw confetti or nosegays 
out of the Corso, or to use them of injurious materials, 
Nevertheless, during the Carnival hours it was quite 
dangerous to pass on foot through the adjacent streets, 
for.no man or woman was secure from the insults of 
these ruffians. On one occasion I was myself driving 
down the Babuino, when I received a blow on the face 
from a filthy ma%zo of weed-stalks, with a pebble in the 
midst, which nearly cut open my cheek. 

The first day of Carnival I imagined that I counted 
eleven or twelve carriages, of which all but two were 
unquestionably English. My calculation, however, was 
treated as exorbitant by other spectators, and seven or 
eight were believed to be the maximum of the whole 
day, not counting the gingerbread coaches of the Senator 
of Eome and the municipal authorities who opened the 
festival. It is a good idea of itself, that of the Senator, 
the solitary senator of Eome ! There is an old Joe 
Miller story of some poor Paddy or Mike, who being 
interrogated in '98, confessed, "Please your honour! I 
am an United Irishman." But the Popes have sur- 
passed their Hibernian disciples in the art of making 
bulls, since they can create such a thing as a senator 
where there is no senate, a " conscript father" who is 
conscripted only to meet himself ! In a very fine gilt 
coach, and in a very pretty court dress, drives down the 
Corso to open the Carnival this Senator, who resumes in 



96 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



his sole person the dignity of that mighty order before 
whose majestic presence, as they sat on their ivory 
thrones, the savage Gauls stood awestruck, and who in 
later times became the arbiters of the destiny of the 
world — " Oh, what a falling off was here ! " But what 
are all things in Rome save fallings off ! SPQE still 
decorates a thousand public edifices, but the " Senate" 
is reduced to " the Senator;" and the People of Eome, 
what voice or share have they in anything in their own 
city ? We shall see by and by how their own streets 
are not their own to walk through at noonday, when it 
pleases their masters to shut them out of them. 

This, then, was the show of the first day of Carnival 
from two o'clock till six. Troops, troops, troops, in 
service and off service, on foot and horseback, to guard 
the Corso, to people the Corso, to clear the Corso. Then 
the gilt coaches as aforesaid ; then the eight, ten, or 
twelve carriages ; some common open flys ; some drags 
covered with calico, with Englishmen and women in 
all, save two, driving up and down, up and down, 
throwing nosegays to ladies on the balconies, and 
receiving the like in return. Yery long intervals 
occurred between the carriages. The good bouquets ran 
short, and hideous little bunches of weeds were substi- 
tuted, and the odious lime confetti, and lime which was 
not confetti, soon covered everybody with a dirty dust 
like that of a mill. At last six o'clock arrived. Three 
guns were fired, and then there rushed down the street 
five or six poor horses, terrified and goaded by the 
screams of the people and by pieces of sharp brass 
fastened to their harness so as to spur them at every 



THE ETEENAL CITY. 



97 



motion. This is the famous race which charity at 
length substituted for the pastime of making the Jews 
of the Ghetto run the gauntlet of the Cor so annually 
for Christian delectation. To this day the Jews are 
obliged actually to pay for their four-footed substitutes, 
by giving prizes of pieces of silk and velvet to the winner. 

"With this cruel sport closed the first day of Carnival. 
The play was small and poor enough at the best. Had 
there been no English there, it might be truly affirmed 
there could have been no Carnival at alL On Monday 
the state of affairs was almost the same as on Saturday. 
On Tuesday there were in all sixteen carriages. On 
Wednesday, as the day was showery, there were pre- 
cisely two. To understand the magnitude of the change 
indicated by these numbers, let it be remembered that 
in former years the whole length of the Corso was filled 
by a close double file of carriages passing up and down 
at foot pace; the Piazzo del Popolo and the adjoining 
streets overflowed with the throng ; and it might be 
said that the whole city gave itself up unreservedly to 
the sport. Every creature who could afford it was dis- 
guised in some way, and the rich wore splendid costumes, 
and made brilliant pageants of their carriages. Erom 
fifteen hundred or eighteen hundred carriages, to eight, 
sixteen, and two ; from princely masquers to this dull 
and dirty mob — is assuredly something of a change. 
The character and rank of the people who now took 
their places in the Carnival carriages was even a greater 
change than in the number of the vehicles themselves. 
Formerly it was the whole splendid noblesse of Borne, 
the ambassadors and visitors from all the other States 

H 



98 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



of Italy and of Europe. Now, with the exception of 
the eternal English and one Spanish carriage, the drags 
and hack britzkas were filled by the refuse of the city, 
leaving it, as before mentioned, a grave and reasonable 
subject of doubt as to whether they were not criminals 
released from the prisons for this pious work. Indul- 
gences of twenty years, which were certainly offered, 
seemed to affect only the most miserable class of the 
population. 

Such, then, was the state of affairs in the Corso. 
Let us see how things fared in the Forum. 

For each of the first days of the Carnival there was 
a certain number of calm and resolute looking men of 
the burgher class walking and conversing together 
quietly up and down the principal Forum. From two 
till six there were always several hundreds coming and 
going. The word had been given, however, that the 
chief assembly should take place on Thursday, and 
therefore those who had occupations only quitted them 
on that day, simply refraining previously from visiting 
the Carnival, after the fashion hitherto universal. At 
three o'clock, then, on Thursday, I drove to the Forum, 
expecting to find perhaps some one or two thousand pa- 
triots there assembled. But what a sight greeted me on 
entering that place, usually so silent and desolate ! The 
whole vast arena was crowded with men, not only filling 
the avenues, but thronging the banks of ruins on every 
side, and even gathered in the sunken spaces where 
stand the columns of the temples on the pavement of 
the ancient city. Farther on, past the Temple of 
Concord, and through the Arch of Titus, down the old 



THE ETERNAL CITY. 



99 



rough Eoman pavement to the great open space before 
and around the Coliseum, and up through the Arch 
of Constantine, the mass of human beings extended. 
Noble-looking men they were ; such representatives of 
the Eoman people as I had not believed were to be 
found. Stalwart and handsome, three-fourths of them 
would have been fit to make as fine volunteers as 
any in England ; and on this day, their countenances 
having cast off the gloom which seems to weigh over 
the whole nation at other times, looked radiant with 
confidence and enthusiasm. In every sense they formed 
a most remarkable assembly. Not for a moment could 
they have been called a mob. I did not see twenty 
" roughs" among the twenty thousand, not five 
beggars (mirdbile dictu in Rome), not one of that 
hideous class of gaunt and grimy outcasts who never 
fail to surge up out of their unseen dens into the day- 
light on the occasions of public excitement amongst us. 
All were dressed as became men of the middle rank, 
tradesmen, artists, and artisans in Sunday attire. Many 
brought their respectable looking wives and daughters, to 
the number of a fifth or sixth of the assembly, including 
the ladies in carriages. There was no sort of reason why 
they should not be there. Everything was as calm and 
quiet as in Hyde Park on a summer Sunday. Nobody 
wore the tricolor; nobody attempted to raise the cry 
which was in every one's heart — " Viva il Ee d' Italia !" 
They all knew right well that their presence there was 
itself the sufficient demonstration, and that any act which 
gave excuse for their enemies to disperse them would 
have been to injure their cause. There were plenty of 

h 2 



100 



THE CITIES 0E THE PAST. 



troops ready to attack them had they given such excuse ; 
French troops all of them, except a few Papal gen- 
darmes. Goyon had insisted that the Italian soldiers, 
who naturally were far more offensive to the people, 
should not on this day, as on the previous ones, insult 
them by their presence. The French troops marched up 
and down at intervals with bayonets fixed, and the 
Trench captain of the city rode through the crowd con- 
tinually, followed by his aides, but nothing further was 
attempted. The hours passed on, and the crowd grew 
thicker. Prom four till six o'clock, I drove up and 
down, my carriage forming one of a compact double 
file which extended from the Capitol to the Coliseum. 
Half round the giant ruin and through all the space 
below were crowds of vehicles drawn up, some of the 
humbler class, some belonging to the Eoman nobles. 
Closer and closer they pressed, till it took half an hour 
to pass through the narrow Arch of Titus into the 
Forum above. 

But no details of facts like these can convey the im- 
pression of that great scene — a nation's silent protest 
against its wrongs, made there in that old Forum of 
Eome, where every stone was a memory of their fathers' 
glory. Oppressed for months as every free-born man 
and woman must feel in Eome by the sense of tyranny 
and wrong (all the more odious because they leave us 
unmolested while grinding those around us to the dust), 
it was like escaping out of the Pontine Marshes to the 
breezy summits of the Apennines, to pass out of the 
streets of Eome into that assembly of patriots. 

At last the bright Italian day came to its close, and 



THE ETEKNAL CITY. 



101 



as the last rays of the setting sun ceased to play through 
the arches- of the Coliseum, the people prepared to de- 
part, calmly and peacefully, yet with one further inten- 
tion of proving their purpose in coming thither. Up 
the hill of the Capitol they walked, and then poured 
over the splendid piazza where stands the statue of 
Marcus Aurelius,^ all walking in close column and in 
regular step. Their leaders seemed perfectly under- 
stood, and the word to proceed or to halt was instantly 
obeyed. The French troops, who occupy one wing of 
the Capitol, viewed the parties with evident amazement. 
But there was no arresting twenty thousand men ; and 
so on they marched in perfect military order across the 
square and down the giant slopes of stairs into the 
Piazza del Ara Caeli, and so away, gradually dispersing 
below. The demonstration was thus complete. It had 
been proved that the whole people who had a right to be 
considered the citizens of Rome, disdained to attend 
their great national festival under present circumstances. 
It had been proved that they preferred, at every risk, to 
show their hopes of national regeneration by obeying 
the dictates of the liberal committee, and assembling in 
the Forum this year, even as last year they had gone 
out towards the old lions Sacer from the Porta Pia. 

* It is little known that this statue, the grandest in the 
world, represents the magnanimous Emperor in the act of par- 
doning and releasing his German captives and rebels. A 
bas-relief in the adjoining gallery shows the whole scene, and 
Marcus Aurelius in the same attitude. Shall we ever see a 
statue of that old heathen's Christian successors on the Roman 
throne forgiving their political captives ? 



102 



THE CITIES 0E THE PAST. 



Finally, it was proved they were in perfect co -operation 
together, under leaders to whom military headships 
would immediately be conceded if needful. The day's 
work was well done. 

On Friday the Liberals resolved to go to the Corso, 
for the precise reason that on account of the fast there 
would be no Carnival, and their presence there in large 
masses would of course mark the difference of their 
absence on other days. Accordingly, in the afternoon 
they commenced filling the street in their usual quiet 
manner. This was more, however, than most holy 
tempers could bear. The Pope and his ministers were 
perfectly furious. Last year they had sent the de- 
tested executioner to disgrace the Liberal gathering at 
the Porta Pia, but without the smallest success. That 
" dodge/' therefore, could not be tried again. Some- 
thing much worse was resolved on. It was thought, as 
on St. Joseph's Day, in 1860, that a little bloodletting 
was needful for the feverish population, and that that 
favourite Italian remedy had better be applied without 
delay. De Merode, therefore, ordered that the Pon- 
tifical cavalry, as soon as the street was full, should 
charge the unarmed people, and cut them down without 
reserve. It is further confidently asserted that cannon 
from the Piazza del Popolo were to rake the street in 
advance. For the truth of this latter statement I 
cannot positively vouch, but of the other no doubt 
whatever exists, and the proof was clear. General 
Goyon hearing of De Merode' s intention, instantly for- 
bade its fulfilment, declaring he would take on himself 
to preserve order, by his French troops alone. Without 



THE ETERNAL CITY. 



103 



a minute's delay, lie sent all the Pontifical soldiers 
back to their barracks, and placed his own all down the 
Corso, from which they instantly expelled every creature, 
whether walking or driving ; double guards, with 
bayonets fixed, were placed at both ends, and at the 
corner of every cross street, and for the five busiest 
hours of the day, the whole main thoroughfare of Eome 
was utterly closed. To imagine the effect of such an 
act, one has to conceive what it would be to clear 
Piccadilly and the Strand, or the Rue Eivoli, from two 
o'clock till sunset, allowing no creature to walk down it, 
or a vehicle of any sort to pass along it. Goyon him- 
self only, with his staff, rode up and down the whole 
afternoon. At the same time, large detachments with 
stands of arms were stationed in all the adjoining 
Piazzas. Assuredly the Liberals had here gained another 
great point, since their unarmed demonstration was con- 
sidered so important and formidable as to need such 
a colossal display of military force. 

It was not to be supposed that the wrath of the 
priestly government would stop at the mere prevention 
of disturbance. Victims they were determined to find, 
and unhappily some feminine treachery put the means 
of doing so in their hands. Domiciliary visits ended in 
the arrest of thirty or thirty-five Liberals, the number 
being yet uncertain, and likely to remain so in a country 
where there is no Habeas Corpus, and no public trial of 
any kind. A paper which they found, and which would 
have compromised many inferior names, was fortunately 
in a cipher beyond their powers of explanation. The 
invaluable printing-press also remained undiscovered. 



104 THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 

The incarceration of these ten patriots (a temporary one 
it needs must be) is therefore deeply to be deplored, for 
their sakes ; but the interests of their party will not, it 
is hoped, essentially suffer. One of them, named De 
Angelis, a mercante di campagna, or large farmer, and 
Signor Venanzi (not Penanzi, as most of the papers 
called him) — are both men of some note. It is not 
believed that any of these gentlemen formed a portion 
of the mysterious National Committee. The circum- 
stance which gave rise to the report that that body had 
been discovered and arrested was the ridiculous blunder 
of the sbirri, who mistook a list of names of subscribers 
to Cavour's monument for a list of members of the Com- 
mittee. The manner in which the perquisitions of these 
myrmidons are effected is particularly suited to lead to 
such discoveries of " mares' nests.' ' In the case of one 
gentleman, they seized on some common Florentine 
studs in his dressing-box, bearing the cross of Savoy, 
with much the same triumph as witch-finders pounced 
on a black cat in an old woman's cottage as an irre- 
fragable proof of dealings with the Evil One. Proceed- 
ing further to examine his photographic album, and 
discovering the cartes de visit e of Victor Emmanuel and 
Garibaldi, the filthy wretches called " officers of justice" 
spat upon the photographs till they were destroyed. 
Further on in the book they came on the portrait of 
Napoleon III., whereupon they remarked to one another, 
" Ah, we will leave this one for the present" Worse 
evidences of their brutality were given in the arrest of 
one young gentleman, the only son of a poor widowed 
lady, who is dying of cancer. The poor mother was 



THE ETERNAX CITY. 



105 



alarmed in the dead of the night by. the violent breaking 
up of the furniture in her son's room, and the hammers 
of the muratori pulling up floors and opening walls to 
discover papers. Whatever was found was supposed to 
be enough to incriminate the young man, and he was 
torn from his dying mother, to be thrust, Grod knows for 
how long, into the dungeons of San Michele. Heaven 
grant that he and his friends may be liberated ere it be 
too late to save them — not by their priestly foes, of that 
there is no hope — but by the arms of a rejoicing and 
liberated nation. 

The last days of the Carnival had now arrived. 
Monday and Tuesday were to conclude it, as Lent com- 
menced on Wednesday. Redoubled efforts were made 
to bring the " festivities" to an end without too obvious 
failure. Tuesday evening especially, it was hoped, 
would make amends, with its usually brilliant conclusion, 
for past dulness. The driving, and the balconies, and 
confetti, and bouquets, and horse-races, had been failures, 
or nearly so. The masked balls, or " festini," had been 
dull and dead beyond example. Hope yet remained in 
the moccoletti. The intellectual and rational diversion 
of lighting small tapers and flaring them about, scatter- 
ing grease and danger of conflagration on all sides, while 
friends and acquaintances struggle to extinguish the 
flame, and exclaim, when successful, the sacramental 
words, " Senza moccolo this manly pastime of the 
senatus popidusque Romanum yet held out promise of 
success. Lived there indeed a Roman with soul so dead 
as to resist the moccoletti ? Who could believe it ? 

The day arrived. The pelting of lime and weeds was 



106 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



duller than ever. Even the cruel sight of the horse- 
race fell dead. Frightened brutes run very much the 
same one day with another, and eight days of it were 
enough. Finally, the short twilight of Italy commenced, 
and people began to light the little tapers which dealers 
were selling diligently in the street with an air of busi- 
ness worthy of all admiration. A few dozen soon glim- 
mered down the Corso and in the drawing-rooms on 
either side. Moccoletti for ever ! Moccoletti will yet 
save the Carnival, the Church, the world ! 

Oh, adverse fate ! oh, unpropitious heavens ! At that 
moment softly and sweetly descended a refreshing 
shower of rain. Out went the moccoletti, up went the 
umbrellas with which, of course, the English part of the 
audience were armed at all hazards. The Carnival was 
over ! 



A DAY AT THE DEAD SEA, 



107 



A DAY AT THE DEAD SEA. 

The world's beauty is for ever young, but the world's 
awe and terror are rapidly passing away. The halo of 
mystery which once hung over a hundred hills and 
groves and caverns is dissipating before our eyes like 
a resolvable nebula in Lord Posse's telescope. The 
Sphynx is no enigma now. That solemn face, blasted 
by the suns and storms of sixty centuries, has been 
admirably photographed, and we shall no doubt all 
place it shortly along with other interesting characters, 
as a carte de visite in our albums. Dagon, the " thrice 
battered god of Palestine," who seemed to us once so 
awful a personage, has been dragged out of his grave in 
Sennacherib's burned and buried palace, and set up like 
a naughty boy in a corner in the British Museum. 
Scylla and Charybdis, where are their terrors now? 
Is not Charybdis traversed, and does not Scylla echo, 
every Monday and Thursday, the puffs of the steamboats 
of the Messageries Imperiales ? The cave of Trophonius 
and the fountain of Ammon, Styx and Acheron, Del- 
phic groves and Theban tombs, have we not rifled and 
sketched and vulgarized them all ? Pic-nies are held, 
as Mr. Trollope assures us, in the valley of Jehoshaphat 
and the very sepulchre of St. James. Even that far- 



108 



THE CITIES OF THE PASTe 



off shrine immortalized by Calderon — the terror-haunted 
" Purgatory" beneath the waters of — 

That dim lake 
Where sinful souls their farewell take 
Of this sad world, 

has it not become the scene of " pattens " to which we 
blushingly confess having once ourselves made a pil- 
grimage — in a tandem! 

But there is still some faint lingering shadow of the 
terrible and the sublime in our ideas of the Dead Sea — 
the accursed Asphaltites. True, we have unhappily 
discovered all about it — its topography, hydrography, 
and chemical analysis. We know that birds fly over it 
and fish swim in it, and that the pillar designated as 
Lot's "Wife (or " Mrs. Salter," as we once heard a child 
call that ill-fated lady) is the result of a secular abrasion 
of certain saline and bituminous deposits. Still, when 
all is said, " Mare Mortuum " is an awe-inspiring name. 
If there be anything which ought not to die, it is a sea 
— the " image of eternity," the emblem of life and 
motion, which Byron could adjure : 

Time writes no wrinkles on thine azure brow, 
Such as Creation's dawn beheld thou rollest now. 

But here is a sea not dowered with the immortal youth 
of the ever-leaping ocean, but dead — dead for three 
thousand years; ay, dead and damned to boot — the 
accursed Lake of Sodom ! "We confess it with shame 
(for it was a piece of crass ignorance), we had never 
constructed out of our moral consciousness, or out of 
any book of travels, any definite idea of a Dead Sea 



A DAY AT THE DEAD SEA. 



109 



before we actually saw it with our eyes. It had re- 
mained one of those blessed dark corners of the ima- 
gination, wherein the terrible yet peeps out at us, as 
in childhood awful eyes used to do, from the deep bays 
of the room after dark, when we sat by our mother's 
knees in the red firelight before the candles were 
brought, and heard her stories of wolves and lost 
children in a wood. If it had been proposed to us as 
a practicable excursion to visit Ogre's House, or Giant 
Despair's Castle, or Bluebeard's Bed Chamber, we 
should have gone with as nearly as possible the same 
feelings of delight as we started for our journey on the 
morning of our " Day at the Dead Sea." In the faint 
hope that in this era of tourists and readers of tourists' 
books there may yet survive some few as ignorant as 
ourselves to whom we could convey a share of our im- 
pressions of interest and pleasure, we shall indite a 
brief record of that little experience. " Better twenty 
years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay," we are often 
tempted to say. But it must be owned there are some 
clays in the East which it would be hard to parallel 
with any month in Europe, however replete with ex- 
citement and interest. At least, in our own lives, " a 
day in Cairo, a day at the Pyramids, a day in Jeru- 
salem, a day at Baalbec, and this day at the Dead Sea," 
have had no equals, even in Athens or Eome. 

As we are to speak of the land where time is counted 
from sunset to sunset, our day must begin, like that of 
Eden, in the evening. 

Mar Saba is not a nice place to sleep at — that is to 



110 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



say, for people with prejudices on the subject of centi- 
pedes. The ground where the tents of pilgrims are 
pitched affords every possible opportunity for the study 
of those entertaining articulata, and of course it is quite 
impossible in a tent to exercise anything else but hos- 
pitality towards any visitors who may choose to " drop 
in." True that for travellers of the nobler sex, the 
grand old monastery of Mar Saba opens its doors and 
offers the purest spiritual consolation in the shape of 
surpassingly excellent raki (the most unmitigated alcohol 
known). Eut for an unholy " Hajj in " (or female pil- 
grim) like the writer no such luck was in store. The 
convent of St. Saba must never be polluted by feminine 
Balmorals, and the society of the centipedes was quite 
good enough for us. It was accordingly with no small 
perturbation of mind that, before retiring to rest, we 
investigated the manners and customs of those remark- 
able creatures. On a small bush of broom — the original 
Planta-genista of the most royal of kingly races — we 
discovered about three or four dozen of our friends, long 
and black, and vicious-looking in the extreme. Placing 
my gauntlelt alongside of one of them as a measure, it 
appeared that the centipede was somewhat longer than 
the glove, or about six inches from tip to tail. All 
down t the sides the little black legs moved in the most 
curious way from four or five centres of motion 
(ganglia, I suppose), so that he looked like a very fine 
black comb, down which somebody slowly drew four or 
five fingers. Did he bite, or did he sting — and could 
he crawl fast, and was he not likely to establish him 
self for the night where we were keeping open house 



A DAY AT THE DEAD SEA. 



Ill 



or rather tent ? Nay (frightful reflection), was there 
anything to prevent him and his congeners ensconcing 
themselves in onr beds ? "We confess that it was with 
terrible misgivings we slept that night the sleep of 
people who have been eleven honrs in the saddle, and 
burning was our indignation against asceticism in 
general, and the prejudices of St. Saba in particular, on 
the subject of the admission of petticoats to his monas- 
tery. The good .Franciscans at Ramleh (the Arimathea 
of Scripture) had known better, and allotted to us a 
dormitory, where, however, we had some small but 
assiduous attendants, through whose ministrations we 
were (as good people say) " grievously exercised," and 
obliged to pass the night in researches more nearly con- 
nected with entomology than with biblical antiquities. 

No ; Mar Saba is riot a nice place to sleep at, but we 
did sleep in spite of the centipedes. For my part, at 
least, I slept so soundly and with such ^ivid dreams of 
far-off green woods of the west, and dear ones parted* 
by thousands of miles, that when wakened at midnight 
by the howling of the wild beasts of the wilderness, it 
was all but impossible to recover the sense of reality, or 
rather to know whereon to fix it — on the natural home- 
like dream of the little child with her arms around my 
neck, sitting under the old trees, or on the weird 
picture before my eyes at *the tent door — the wild 
hollow in the desolate hills, and the group of our well- 
armed guard of Arabs around the watch-fire; while 
beyond them Orion, burning in all the glory of a Syrian 
night, was slowly sinking behind the desert mountains 
of Judaea. 



112 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



It is strange how everything in the simple life of 
tents suggests the analogies of the moral life. A. jour- 
ney in the desert is like reading a series of parables. 
We are then truly "pilgrims and sojourners on earth," 
— the place which has known us for one brief day will 
know us no more for ever. "We really thirst for cooling 
fountains, and pant under the burning sun for " the 
shadow of a great rock in a weary land." The simple 
realities of existence, which so rarely approach us at all 
in the orderly and over-finished life of England, where 
we slide, without jolt or jar from the cradle to the 
grave, along the smooth rails laid down by civilization, 
are present once more in the wildernesses of the East. 
That very morning at Mar Saba, as we watched our 
tents taken down, and all traces of our brief encamp- 
ment passing away, to be renewed as transitorily else- 
where at night, it forced itself on my mind more clearly 
than ever before, how the noblest aim of life could 
only be 

Nightly to pitch our moving tents 
A day's march nearer home ; 

— a real full day's pilgrimage in the right direction. 
And, alas ! per contra, how few of the easily numbered 
days allotted to us seem actually to forward us one step 
thitherward !. 

"Whether it be from these associations with great 
realities, or from its wondrously healthy effect (making 
" well " a positive condition, and not, as usual, a mere 
negation of being "ill"), or from what other occult 
suitability to humanity, I know not ; but decidedly the 
tent life is beyond all others attractive and fascinating. 



A DAY AT THE DEAD SEA. 



113 



At first, being sufficiently fond of the comfortable, I 
dreaded it greatly ; but after two or three nights, the 
spell it never fails to exercise fell on me, and I wished 
it could go on for months. It seems as if, at bottom 
of the Saxon nature, there is some unsuspected corner 
which always echoes joyously to the appeal, 

Let us, then, be up and doing, with a heart for any fate. 

Whether it be 

To-morrow to fresh fields and pastures new, 

or to 

Antres vast and deserts idle, 

like those of Mar Saba, it is all the same. Only " let 
us go on — on to a new life ; and let the traces of the old 
be swept away as rapidly as may be." "Let the dead 
Past bury its dead." 

Is all this natural and wise, or utterly wrong and 
foolish ? I am not quite persuaded ; but at any rate it 
is of little consequence to decide the question, for our 
English climate settles the matter for us, practically, 
very decisively. How did Robin Hood and Maid Marian 
ever escape rheumatism and catarrh ? 

Our English progress is, I hope, of a more real sort 
than that of the Arab, whose tent is the only thing 
connected with him which does move. After four 
thousand years the Scheikh of Hebron has probably not 
varied an iota from the costume, the habits, or the 
acquirements of Abraham. The immobility of every- 
thing in the East is like that of the boulder-stones laid 
at intervals for landmarks across the plains, as regularly 
to-day as when Moses cursed the man who should 

i 



114 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



remove them three thousand years ago. The tents 
move, but all else is stationary. Our houses, on the 
contrary, remain from age to age, while all things else 
are in continual change. Where are now the costumes, 
the habits, the ideas of our ancestors, not three thousand, 
but three hundred years ago ? Yet we live in their 
homes and worship in their churches, while the Syrian's 
tent has moved and changed uncounted times in the 
same interval. May those " stately homes of England" 
stand firm for many an age ; and may we never advance 
to that doctrine of the Yankee in Hawthorn's House of 
the Seven Gables, "that it is an insolence for any man 
to build a house which should outlast his own life, and 
oblige his son to dwell in the chambers he had designed, 
and not in those of his own original choice!" It is 
hardly to be measured, I think, how much of the best 
and tenderest family feelings amongst us are due to the 
old house, wherein all associations are centred, wherein 
each member of the race feels pride, where the pictures 
of our forefathers hang side by side on the walls, and 
their dust rests together in the vault hard by. Shame 
is it that such deep human feelings as these should be 
soiled by vulgar pride of rank or wealth, or monopo- 
lized by the rich alone, as if they were not equally the 
birthright of the humblest family who could possess 
their English cottage or Highland shelty, and who might 
attach to them equally all the affections which would 
sanctify the castle or the palace. It is not the grandeur 
of the house, nor the artistic merit of the family pic- 
tures, nor the splendour of the funeral monuments 
which give them their power. It is the great Divine 



A DAY AT THE DEAD SEA. 1.15 

institution of the family which gives to the hearth its 
sanctity, and to the picture, and chair, and tree, and 
grave, their influence over our hearts. To raise and 
ennoble the poor we must surely in every way possible 
strengthen and elevate the reverence for family ties. 
We must secure for them the power of earning by their 
industry homes which shall be really homes — not lodg- 
ing-houses or temporary tenancies ; but homes wherein 
may grow up those sentiments of honest pride, of mutual 
solidarity (making each member of the family interested 
in the honour and welfare of all the rest), of grateful 
youth and tenderly nurtured age, which may at last 
drive away the plague of pauperism from our land. 
Wherever this state of things is approached, as in Cum- 
berland, Switzerland, and parts of Prance (the depart- 
ment of Seine-et-Marne, for instance), the moral results 
seem of unmixed good, whatever may be the commer- 
cial consequences as regards the farming of the land. 
There are dreamers whose fanaticism, springing from 
violent recalcitration at the world's wrongs and cruelties, 
we cannot but in a measure honour, who would proceed 
on an opposite plan. I suppose every heart open to a 
generous feeling has in youth experienced the attraction 
of some communistic scheme wherein labour should be- 
come unselfish, and poverty, with all its train of sins 
and woes, be wiped from the destinies of man. These 
philanthropists would say, " Leave your old houses to 
perish, or turn Leigh Hall into a phalanstery." But if 
there were no other flaws in the project, this one would 
suffice. The family is an institution of the Creator, the 
community is an institution of man. However well 

i 2 



116 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



planned, with whatever apparent provision for the family 
to spread its roots and nourish within the walls of the 
community, the tree will in the lapse of time burst its 
way and break down the walls. There is a deep, hid- 
den antagonism between the two, which, as each grows, 
is more and more developed. "When it comes to a con- 
test between God's plan and man's plan, we can have 
little doubt which will be beaten in the long run. 
Assuredly it is through the Divine institution of the 
family, not against it ; by increasing and elevating its 
influence, and restoring it when it has been crushed out 
by sin and misery, that we shall help mankind. 

It was a glorious morning at Mar Saba. By four o'clock 
we were all dressed and breakfasting while our tents 
were taken down, and some twenty or thirty recalci- 
trant mules and donkeys first caught and then laden. A 
merry and pretty scene is the departure from a camp ; 
and then, on those bright dawning days, the sense of 
life and health becomes an almost exuberant happiness. 
"We learn there at last — what so many of us forget after 
childhood — that simply to exist in health is a blessing 
and a joy ; — to breathe the morning air, awakened from 
the sound slumbers of real fatigue — to eat rough food 
with keen appetite — to mount the willing, spirited 
Syrian horse, and start for the long day's travel with the 
sun mounting into the cloudless sky of Palestine, and 
the wide wilderness of hills stretching around and away 
as far as eye can reach; — all this is joy of itself. 
"We feel inclined to say, as the scheikh did to Layard, 
" Oh, sorrowful dwellers in cities! May Allah have 
mercy upon them ! Is there any kef like this, to ride 



A DAY AT THE DEAD SEA. 



117 



through the flowers of the desert ?" Truly it is better 
thus (once iu a way, at all events), than to be for ever, 
"with blinded eyesight, poring over miserable books." 

As we rode out of the little valley of our encamp- 
ment, and down by the convent of Mar Saba, we ob- 
tained a complete view of the whole hermit bim*oiv, for 
such it may properly be considered. Mar Saba is the 
very ideal of a desert. It lies amid the wilderness of 
hills, not grand enough to be sublime, but only mono- 
tonous and hopelessly barren. So white are these hills, 
that at first they appear to be of chalk, but further 
inspection shows them to be of whitish rock, with hardly 
a trace of vegetation growing anywhere over it. On 
the hills there is sometimes an inch of soil over the 
rock ; in the valleys there are torrents of stones over 
the inch of soil. Between our mid-day halt at Der- 
binerbeit (the highest land in Judaea), and the evening- 
rest at Mar Saba, our whole march had been in utter 
solitude — not a village, a tent, a caravan, a human 
being in sight. Not a tree or bush. Of living crea- 
tures hardly a bird to break the dead silence of the 
world, only a large and venomous snake crawling be- 
side our track. Thus far from human haunts, in the 
heart of the wilderness of Judaea, lies Mar Saba. Pit 
approach to such a shrine ! Through the arid, burning 
rocks a profound and sharply-cut chasm suddenly opens 
and winds, forming a hideous valley, such as may exist 
in the unpeopled moon, but which probably has not its 
equal in our world for rugged and blasted desolation. 
There is no brook or stream in the depths of the ravine. 
If a torrent may ever rush down it after the thunder- 



118 



THE CITIES OP THE PAST. 



storms with which the country is often visited, no traces 
of water remain eyen in early spring. Barren, burning, 
glaring rocks alone were to be seen on every side. Tar 
up on the cliff, like a fortress, stand the gloomy, win- 
do wless walls of the convent ; but along the ravine, in 
almost inaccessible gorges of the hills, are caves and 
holes half-way down the precipice, the dwellings of the 
hermits. Here, in a den fit for a fox or a hyaena, one 
poor soul had died just before our visit, after five- anti- 
forty years of self incarceration. Death had released 
him, but many more remained, and we could see some 
of them from the distant road as we passed, sitting in 
the mouths of their caverns, or walking on the little 
ledges of rock they had smoothed for terraces. Of 
course their food (such as it is) is conveyed to them, or 
let down from the cliffs from the convent at needful in- 
tervals. Otherwise they live absolutely alone — alone in 
this hideous desolation of nature, with the lurid, blasted 
desert for their sole share in God's beautiful universe. 
"We are all, I suppose, accustomed to think of a hermit 
as our poets have painted him, dwelling serene in 

A lodge in some vast wilderness, 
Some boundless continuity of shade, 

undisturbed by all the ugly and jarring sights and 
sounds 'of our grinding civilization, sleeping calmly on 
his bed of fern, feeding on his pulse and cresses, and 
drinking the water from the brook. 

He kneels at morn and noon and eve, 

He hath a cushion plump, 
It is the moss that wholly hides 

The rotted old oak stump. 



A DAY AT THE DEAD SEA. 



119 



But the hermits of Mar Saba, how different are they 
from him who assoiled the Ancient Mariner ? No holy 
cloisters of the woods, and sound of chanting brooks, 
and hymns of morning birds — only this silent burning 
waste — this " desolation deified.' 5 It seemed as if some 
frightful aberration of the religious sentiment could 
alone lead men to choose for home, temple, prison, tomb, 
the one spot of earth where no flower springs to tell of 
God's tenderness, no soft dew, nor sweet sound ever 
falls to preach faith and love. 

There are many such hermits still in the Greek Church. 
I have seen their eyries perched where only vultures 
should have their nests, on the cliffs of Caramania, and 
among the caverns of the Cyclades. Anthony and Sty- 
lites have left behind them a track of evil glory, along 
which many a poor wretch still " crawls to heaven along 
the devil's trail." Is it indeed easier to do " some great 
thing" — to make some wondrous life-long sacrifice, or 
suffer some terrific martyrdom for God's sake, than 
simply to obey the law of love to Him and our neigh- 
bour ? How can it be that, when these monstrous sacri- 
fices are asked by any creed, however base and low (like 
the Paganism of India), the victims are never wanting, 
and where the sole demand is, " Give me thine heart," 
there is no response, or but a poor, faint, miserable one ? 
Shame on us that so it should be ! 

On we rode past the defile of the poor hermits, and 
out upon the hills beyond Mar Saba. Steep hills they 
were ; and for four hours little time had we to attend 
to anything but our horses' feet, arid how we could keep 
ourselves from slipping off as they scrambled up, like 



120 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



cats, the formidable acclivities. At last we came out 
upon a sort of undulated plain, where it was possible to 
canter forward, and of course the party soon started on 
a gallop, which was near costing me rather dearly. One 
of the ladies having ridden in advance, the old scheikh, 
in great excitement and delight, raced alongside of her, 
shouting, "Tahib! Tahib !" (Good! good!), and evi- 
dently marvelling at the equestrianism of an English- 
woman on her awkward saddle. Fired with laudable 
ambition, I went after them ; the lady gradually fell 
back, and Ali and I rode on galloping at considerable 
pace, while he screamed louder and louder, " Tahib ! 
Tahib — katiyeh !" and threw his spear in the air. Find- 
ing at last, however, that the Arab's fine horse was 
inevitably beating the hack supplied me by our drago- 
man, I arrived at the sage resolution of stopping before 
we had left the caravan too far behind. Accordingly, I 
tried to pull up ; but these Syrian horses, accustomed 
to be ruled by the voice, consider any touch of the rein 
only an instigation to further speed, and if it be tightened 
severely they immediately run restive. In a moment 
my hitherto amiable steed had taken the bit between 
his teeth, and struck off at fullest pace into the desert 
at right angles to our track. " Ali ! Ali ! Mdosh Tahib !" 
{Not good) I shouted ; but Ali never dreamed of looking 
behind, but disappeared from my sight, still brandishing 
his djereed, and complacently screaming, " Tahib " at 
the top of his voice. It was not a pleasant position. I 
was being carried as fast as my horse could bear me into 
the trackless wilderness. I had utterly lost all com- 
mand of him, nobody having informed me of the talis- 



A DAY AT THE DEAD SEA. 



121 



manic, "La! la ! " (JS T o ! no!) " Sehwoi, schwoi," 
(gently, gently), which would soon have brought him to 
reason. After a considerable run, I fortunately spied 
to the right a track where the sand evidently lay thick, 
and with some hard sawing, I guided the horse into it, 
and brought him to a standstill. From thence we 
tracked our way back eventually into the road, where 
the caravan was still in sight. These undulating and 
yet monotonous plains are most perplexing places, and 
it is the easiest thing in the world to lose oneself in 
them. 

As we descended towards the Dead Sea the vegetation 
became a little more rich. There were wild flowers in 
abundance, and large bushes of broom, and a certain 
plant of the snap-dragon kind, which formed a gorgeous 
yellow rod, and which I wish much I could call by its 
right name, and describe in proper botanical terms. It 
had eight large flowerets in each circle round the stem, 
and eight or ten tiers of circles in bloom at once, alto- 
gether a huge mass of flower as long and thick as a 
man's arm. 

It was while riding through the low hills covered 
with this vegetation, and just before coming out on the 
blighted flats of the Dead Sea, that one of those pictures 
passed before me which are ever after hung up in the 
mind's gallery among the choicest of the spoils of 
Eastern travel. By some chance I was alone, riding a 
few hundred yards in front of the caravan, when, turn- 
ing the corner of a hill, I met a man coming towards 
me ; the only one we had seen for several hours since we 
had passed a few black tents some eight or ten miles 



122 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



away. He was a noble-looking young shepherd, dressed 
in his camel' s-hair robe, and with the lithesome, power- 
ful limbs and elastic step of the children of the desert. 
But the interest which attached to him was the errand 
on which he had manifestly been engaged, on those Dead 
Sea plains from which he was returning. Round his 
neck, and with its little limbs held gently by his hand, 
lay a lamb he had rescued, and was doubtless carrying 
home. The little creature lay as if perfectly content 
and happy, and the man looked pleased as he strode 
along lightly with his burden, and as I saluted him with 
the usual gesture of pointing to heart and head, and the 
" salaam ali'k!" (Peace be with you), he responded 
with a smile and a kindly glance at the lamb, to which 
he saw my eyes were directed. It was actually the 
beautiful parable of the gospel acted out before my sight. 
Every particular was true to the story ; the shepherd 
had doubtless left his " ninety and nine in the wilder- 
ness/' round the black tents we had seen so far away, 
and had sought for the lost lamb till he found it where 
it must quickly have perished without his help, among 
those blighted plains. Literally, too, " when he had 
found it, he laid it on his shoulders, rejoicing." It 
would, I think, have been a very hard heart which had 
not blessed God for the sight, and taken home to itself 
with fresh faith the lesson that God suffers no wandering 
sheep to be finally lost from His great fold of heaven. 
Even though man may wander to the utmost bounds 
of his iniquity, yet the Good Shepherd rejoicing, shall 
bring the wanderer home, " for He will seek till He find 
him," even on the Bead Sea shore. 



A DAT AT THE DEAD SEA. 



123 



I longed for a painter's power to perpetuate that 
beautiful sight, a better and a truer lesson than the 
scapegoat. Men wonder sometimes what is to be the 
future of art, when opinions change and creeds become 
purified, and we need Madonnas no more than Minervas 
for idols, and are finally wearied of efforts, ever fruit- 
less, to galvanize with the spark of art the corpses of 
dead religions. It seems to me as if modern painters 
and sculptors have before them a field hitherto almost 
unworked, in giving the real colouring to the great 
scenes and parables of ancient story, Hebrew and 
Greek, and Egyptian and Scandinavian, and not repeat- 
ing for ever the conventional types, and costumes, and 
localities, which the old masters adopted of necessity, 
knowing no better, but which, to us, ought to be no 
less absurd than to act Hamlet in the court-dress of 
George II., or Lady Macbeth in a hoop and powder. 
Look at the ordinary pictures of Christ. JSTo Oriental 
ever wore those pink and blue robes, or sat in those 
attitudes. The real dress of a peasant of Palestine is 
at once far more picturesque and more manly, the real 
attitudes of repose infinitely more imposing and digni- 
fied. Look at the painted scenes in Palestine, the deep, 
dark, shadowy woods, and Greek temples, and Eoman 
houses. Are these like the bare olive grove of Gethse- 
mane, or the real edifices of Syria ? The true Areopa- 
gus at Athens, on the rocky slopes of the hill, with the 
temple of Theseus far below, and in the distance the 
blue gulf over which Xerxes sat on his silver-footed 
throne to watch the fight of Salamis ; that real site is 
an infinitely nobler one than Raphael's scene of Paul 



124 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



preaching at Athens on the steps of a Eoman palace, 
and with the circular Tuscan temple filling up the whole 
distance. Probably everywhere the real costume, the 
real scenery, architecture, and colouring of land and 
sky, and, above all, the real types of national features, 
would be far better than even the noblest artist could 
invent, not always in the way of composing a picture, 
but invariably in that of conveying the ideas of the poet 
or historian. A Hebrew prophet grew up with the sky 
of Canaan overhead, its trees, and wild flowers, and 
barren deserts before his eyes. Everything he wrote 
must have borne some deep harmony with these things, 
rather than with the landscapes and the nature of the 
West. And so in all other things, departure from truth 
of couleur locale must surely always lose more in power 
than it gains in beauty. A Mary Magdalene of Zurba- 
ran, in her received Spanish rank of Princess of Magdala, 
with a yellow satin dress and stomacher of pearls, does 
not seem more ridiculous to us now than will be to the 
next generation our pictures of St. Peter, in a pink and 
sky-blue toga, or statues of St. Paul in his conventional 
presentation of an emaciated mediaeval anchorite, with a 
narrow forehead, and head on one side, and long cum- 
brous robes dangling over those brave feet which tra- 
versed the world. Even in the smallest matters, the 
actual facts of a country, its climate, fauna, flora, geo- 
logy, and all the rest, have a right to be considered in 
illustrating its history or its poetry. The sheep of Pales- 
tine, for instance, are pretty and sufficiently intelligent- 
looking creatures, and the lambs quite beautiful — very 
different, at all events, they are from our stupid woolly 



A DAY AT THE DEAD SEA. 



125 



cylinders on four legs, of which we read the other day 
in the Times of one hundred and forty killing them- 
selves by leaping after each other into a dry ditch, for 
no cause or reason whatever — a species of animal whose 
docility some " pastors" may admire, but which a man 
feels it rather humiliating to be called on to imitate. As 
to the goats, they are awfully vicious-looking, with long 
black hair, and an extremely diabolic cast of counte- 
nance. Poor animals ! At last we descended upon the 
burning whitish plains of the Dead Sea, the land bearing 
unmistakeable traces of having been once covered by 
the bituminous waters. Everywhere there grew quan- 
tities of small, scrubby, half-dead bushes of various 
kinds, or else of thick, high rushes beside the water- 
courses, which now became frequent, the water, however, 
being undrinkable. On some of the bushes, resembling 
blackthorns, we found fruit, like sloes, of which one or 
two on each bush seemed in natural condition, and the 
rest all worm-eaten and ready to crush to dry dust upon 
pressure. We gathered many of them, supposing them 
to be " apples of Sodom," but were afterwards better 
informed — the apples of Sodom grow on the opposite 
side of the lake. Whatever fruit, however, is found 
round the whole district, partakes the same character, 
and is always blighted ; growing on such a soil it could 
hardly be otherwise. It is all a mass of saline deposits. 

Now we stood on the shore. It was little like what 
either pictures or imaginations had prepared us to see. 
The April sun was shining down broad and bright on 
the clear rippling waters of the splendid lake, which 
shone with metallic lustre, closed in between the high 



126 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



cliffs of the Judsean hills to the west, and the grand 
chain of Moab, like a heaven-high wall, upon the east. 
Over the distance, and concealing from us the further 
half of the sea, hung a soft sunny haze. There was 
nothing in all this of the Accursed Lake, nothing of 
gloom and desolation. Even the shore was richly studded 
with bright golden chrysanthemums growing to the 
edge of the rippling waters. There was but one feature 
of the scene to convey a different impression ; it was the 
skeletons of the trees once washed down from the woody 
banks of Jordan by the floods into the lake, and then at 
last cast up again by the south wind on the shore and 
gradually half buried in the sands. They stood up 
almost like a blasted grove, with their bare withered 
boughs in all fantastic shapes, whitened and charred as 
if they had passed through the fire. 

It had been my intention, of course, to bathe in the 
sea, so I was provided for the attempt, with the excep- 
tion, unfortunately, of sandals ; and the stones being of 
the sharpest, I was unable to follow the long shallow 
water barefooted far enough out to test its well-known 
buoyancy for swimming. As few ladies, our dragoman 
told us (indeed, he absurdly supposed none), had bathed 
in the Dead Sea, I may as well warn any so disposed 
that the water nearly burnt the skin from my face, and 
occasioned quite excruciating pain for a few moments in 
the nostrils and eyes, and even on the arms and throat. 
The taste of it is like salts and quinine mixed together — 
an odious compound of the saline and the acridly bitter. 
]No great wonder, since its analysis shows a variety of 
pleasing chlorides, and bromides, and muriates, and sul- 



A DAT AT THE DEAD SEA. 127 

pliates, of all manner of nice things ; magnesia and 
ammonia among those more familiar to the gustatory 
nerves. The Dead Sea is thirteen hundred feet lower 
than the Mediterranean, and the evaporation from it 
(without any outlet) fully makes up for the supply 
poured in by Jordan, so that the sea sinks a little as 
time goes on. 

The lesson of life seems to be, that nothing is so good 
or so bad as imagination depicts it beforehand. The 
Dead Sea was not so dead after all. We mounted our 
horses and took a last long look at it, and wished our 
visit had been on a darker day, when the waters should 
not have glittered in the sun under the ineffably soft 
spring sky of Palestine ; but rather when the clouds had 
gathered over the mountains of ILoab, and the autumn 
tempest lashed the black waves of the accursed lake till 
it cast up the scarred and blasted trees upon the shore, 
and swept the blighting spray over the whole plains of 
Jericho. We turned away and rode on through the 
dwarfed underwood, and then over the wide waste of 
yellow sand — away as fast as we could gallop, for we 
had yet a long journey to accomplish before we could 
reach a halt for the night where (even with our Arab 
guard) we should be safe from the attacks of the robber 
gangs who prowl over these wastes . Away we tore in 
the burning sun " over the burning marl/ ' like Leonor 
and her dead companion. " Hurra, hurra, hop, hop, 
hop ! 

The Dead (- sea visitors) ride fast." 

We made our way, as it is only possible to ride in a 
Syrian desert or Roman Campagna. Four hours, I 



128 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



believe, we pushed on with as little breathing space as 
might be, and we were in full career, goaded (I confess 
on my part) by the intolerable stinging of the Dead Sea 
brine on my shoulders, which were too slightly pro- 
tected from the sun, and now seemed pretty nearly on 
fire. Suddenly the sand stops as with a sharp line on 
a slight elevation. On one side utter barrenness and 
desolation; on the other luxuriant grass, a wood of 
aspens and willows, and there it is — Jordan ! The rich 
yellow eddying stream was at our feet. 

A hundred yards further brought us to the spot where 
all the traditions of this storied stream are congregated. 
It is a small curve in the river, half encircling a space 
of an acre or two of grass, and clear on the hither side 
from the trees which elsewhere, above and below, line 
the banks in a compact mass like an Indian jungle. 
This grassy laund is the pilgrim's resting-place, and may 
be used as such safely by the great caravans, although 
it was too exposed for our small party. Above the next 
reach in the river a fine mountain-range closes the view, 
which, independently of its associations, is one of the 
most picturesque in Southern Palestine, though very 
different indeed from the grand scene of rocks and cliffs 
conjured up by Salvator Rosa for his picture of St. John 
preaching in the desert. Jordan is a narrow, deep, and 
turbid stream, eddying fast in its rapid descent into 
Asphaltites. The banks are muddy as those of Avon or 
Tiber, and the stream itself as thick and yellow as the 
Wile. To bathe in it is difficult, from the softness of 
the bottom, in which the feet sink at once above the 
ankle, while the current is so strong as to make it hard 



A DAY AT THE DEAD SEA. 



129 



to hold one's balance. Every year some unfortunate 
pilgrims are lost in the excited rush which hundreds of 
them make at once into the stream, and only two days 
before our arrival, a poor Arab in attendance on an 
English party whom we met at Jerusalem, was drowned 
in attempting to bring them a bundle of canes from the 
opposite side of the river. I found the water, however, 
deliciously soft, and quite a compensation for all diffi- 
culties of bathing was the relief of washing off the Dead 
Sea brine in the sweet waves of Jordan. Of course I 
took my seven plunges in all regularity. 

And here I must be pardoned for a small digression. 
The water-torture of modern times is decidedly applied 
to Europeans by the pouring of Mississippi down our 
throats (metaphorically) by the pitiless inhabitants of 
the Southern States of America. There were two 
ladies from those pleasant regions in our party, who 
invariably, whatever we saw, or heard, or talked of, 
in heaven or earth, incontinently likened it to the 
Mississippi ; or (if that were quite impossible) com- 
pared it with the splendours of a Mississippi steamboat. 
They were kindly disposed and doubtless accomplished 
ladies, but there was something in this state of things 
which gradually threatened madness. The ]S"ile, we 
were told, they had found like Mississippi — Jerusalem 
was not near so fine as New Orleans. If Mar Saba had 
had a stream running at the bottom, then that stream 
would have reminded them of Mississippi. (Alas ! we 
only wished to find anything which would make them 
forget it.) Finally, our tent dinners on kebob and mish- 
mash were not in the least like those on a first-class boat 

e: 



130 



THE CITIES 0E THE PAST. 



on the Mississippi. "When we approached Jordan, it was 
natural to dread that the favourite parallel would be 
brought forward ; and I ventured to confide to an 
English friend my prevision that if the sacred old 
stream were thus insulted patience would be difficult. 
Still, however, after having bathed and dressed myself, 
when seated under one of the great trees, and trying to 
conjure up the scenes which had passed upon that 
storied spot, I confess I was startled at being addressed — 

" Interesting, isn't it, Miss C ? It reminds me 

so much, you can't think, of the Mississippi." 

"JSTo, indeed, it doesn't, I am sure!" I exclaimed. 
"Why, Mississippi is one of the largest rivers in the 
world, and Jordan the smallest." 

" Yes ; but, for all that, it does remind me of the 
Mississippi. If you only went in one of our first-class 
boats," &c. &c. 

And so, from Elijah and the Baptist, I was conveyed 
as quickly as thought might travel down a torrent of 
eloquence to New Orleans. 

My dream of J ordan thus rudely broken, I rose, and 
after a little time we were again in our saddles and 
pursuing our journey towards Jericho. I know not 
whether the experience of a single traveller may be of 
much avail ; but in these days, when so much blind 
prejudice is suffered to grow in England against the 
Northern Americans and in favour of the South, I 
would fain record the testimony of a woman who, 
having travelled alone over a large part of Europe and 
the East, has perhaps more opportunities than most 
men or women of judging of the standard of courtesy of 



A DAY AT THE DEAD SEA. 



131 



different nations. The result of my experience has been 
this. If at any time I needed to find a gentleman who 
should aid me in any little difficulty of travel, or show 
me kindness, with that consideration for a woman as a 
woman, which is the true tone of manly courtesy, then 
I should desire to find a North American gentleman. 
And if I wished to find a lady who should join com- 
pany for any voyage or excursion, and who should be 
sure to show unvarying good temper, cheerfulness, and 
liberality, then I should wish for a North American 
lady. I do not speak of defects which English travellers 
often lay at the door of the whole nation, because they 
meet in Europe Americans of a social rank below any 
which attempts to travel and sit at tables-d' kote of 
our own population ; and they absurdly measure a 
New York shoemaker by the standard of a London 
barrister. I speak of what a genuine Yankee is as a 
fellow-traveller to a lady without companion or escort, 
wealth or rank. They are simply the most kind and 
courteous of any people. Let English??^ be pleased 
to run their prejudices where they like, it behoves at 
least an Englishwoman, whom they have never failed to 
treat with kindness, to speak of the ford as she has 
found it. 

As to the Southern Americans, it must be confessed 
that their chivalry partakes a good deal too much of a 
quality which doubtless coloured all the supposed 
romantic manners of the Middle Ages, and which always 
must reappear when society is divided between despots 
and serfs. I do not think many English ladies and 
gentlemen could comfortably endure the suppression of 

x 2 



132 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



all such, little phrases as " Thank you," " If you please," 
and their equivalents, in addresses to white attendants. 
One feels inclined to return to the exhortation of the 
nursery at all moments, " It wants a word ! " 

I happened once to be dining alone at the convent 
at Ramleh, the Franciscan lay-brother and my Pied- 
montese dragoman conversing together meanwhile. The 
talk ran on the travellers to Palestine, and both of them 
agreed that the Americans were most numerous of any, 
but singularly diverse in character. " Some of them," 
said the monk, ' ( are buonissimi gente ; but some others 
— oh ! they ordered me about, and never said a word of 
thanks, as if I were their servant." " "Worse than that," 
said the Piedmontese Abengo ; " I twice served them 
as dragoman, and they treated me like a dog. I left 
them, though they paid me well, for I could not en- 
dure it. They came from the Southern States, where they 
have slaves." " Ah, si !" said the Franciscan, " qu'est' 
orribile schiavitu !" 

Leaving the willowy banks of Jordan, we turned 
westward, and rode on for some hours across the plains 
of Jericho. The heat was fearful ; not in the least like 
the heat of England, but a roasting of the brains through 
all the folds of hat, and turban, and wet handkerchief 
within them, which gave cause to fear for the share of 
reason which would survive the process. I never under- 
stood before the force of Mahomet's threat to the wicked 
in Jehanum, " Their skull shall boil like a pot." As 
evening closed in and we reached the site where Jericho 
once stood, the sultry atmosphere seemed even more 
stifling. The wonder is, not that Jericho should be 



A DAT AT THE DEAD SEA. 



133 



deserted, but that a city in such a place ever came to be 
built. Closed in by the mountains on every side on 
which a fresh breeze could blow upon it, and open only 
to the unwholesome flats of the Dead Sea, the position 
is absolutely pestilential even in early spring, when we 
visited it. "What it must be in summer and autumn, 
it is hard to guess. The site of Jericho is marked by a 
tower, and by some mounds and broken walls. There 
was on the spot, on the night of our sojourn, a huge 
camp of pilgrims, numbering probably nearly three 
thousand, returning from their dips in Jordan. The 
larger number of these poor creatures are very aged men 
and women, and come from Greece or other distant 
countries. How they bear the enormous fatigue of the 
journey is surprising, but they all go down to Jordan to 
bathe ; the pilgrimage else remains incomplete. On the 
whole it is calculated that, between French, Greeks, and 
all others, there are some fifty thousand of these poor 
creatures who perform the pilgrimage every year. The 
camp was naturally a picturesque sight, and it was 
prettily placed near the stream which watered Jericho, 
and among dwarf groves of thorny acacias and egg-fruit. 
I conversed for a little while with some Greek women 
in their classic head-dresses — if conversing it could be 
called, to interchange a few friendly signs and an odd 
word or two, and exhibit some very bad sketches, which 
they were surprisingly clever to recognise as those of 
the Holy Sepulchre. Their manners were very sweet 
and engaging. I afterwards found those of the poor 
Greek women at Athens to be the same, always per- 
forming smilingly any little service in their power, like 



134 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



giving me water to drink from the fountain of Callirrhoe 
in their beautiful earthen vases, which for gracefulness 
might have served in the household of Pericles. This 
night at Jericho the pilgrims, male and female, were in 
full enjoyment ; and near them a band of Arab soldiers 
danced long and merrily in the starlight. It was a 
pleasant idea of pilgrimage, truly ; and as we went to 
rest at the end of our " Day at the Bead Sea," and 
heard the hyaenas roaring and the jackals barking 
round us in the wilderness, we confess to having some- 
what envied our neighbours' faith, which made going on 
pilgrimage a sacred performance. True that, for these 
poor souls, it involved much fatigue and weariness ; but 
for us, who might boil our peas and go on horseback, it 
was another matter. 

What a pleasant thing it would be, after all, if in our 
day we could only believe in a pilgrimage ! It is a com- 
mon reproach against us modern English that we are all 
home-sick {i. e., sicJc of our homes /) ; and if we could 
but imagine that it were possible to combine a holy 
"work" and a pleasure-trip, the question is, not who 
would go, but who would stay behind. No doubt, in 
the days of the Crusades, the same spirit animated all 
parties. Think of the knights, Who must have rejoiced 
to leave the monotonous society of their ever-spinning 
Penelopes ; the serfs, who must have gloried in escaping 
from their tyrants; the schoolboys, who must have 
played leapfrog half-way to Constantinople for joy of 
leaving their hornbooks and going on such a " lark !" 
"We mean no disrespect to all the religious associations 
and chivalry and heroism, and all that kind of thing, of 



A DAY AT THE DEAD SEA. 



135 



the Crusades ; only, we repeat, we wish it were possible 
to combine in our day, in a similar manner, being so 
remarkably good, and doing something so particularly 
agreeable. "Duty," said a Scotch friend to us once, 
" duty is anything that you find it disagreeable to do." 
"Conscience," said an Irish one, in return, "is that 
which supplies us with good motives for doing whatever 
we like, and fills us with satisfaction when we have 
done it." Of the two diverse views, it is clear that the 
last might authorize us to go on a crusade. 

But next to a crusade give me a pilgrimage. There is 
something in the idea so wonderfully suited to human 
nature, that probably every creed save Protestant Chris- 
tianity has sanctioned it, and had a Mecca, or a Benares, 
or a Compostella, or a Canterbury to which such holy 
journeys might be made for the good of the soul and the 
extreme satisfaction of the body. As England's religion 
admits of nothing of the kind, England's share of the 
universal human sentiment relieves itself by making its 
favourite pious book, next to the Bible, a Pilgrim's 
Progress. Glorious old Bunyan ! half quaintest Puritan, 
half sublimest poet, what do we not all owe to him of 
childhood's dreams and of youth's holiest ambitions ! 
It is he who has given us such a true parable of life 
that it is evermore impossible to separate the real and 
the allegorical, and not to think of despond as a" slough," 
and " dinrculty" as a hill, and sickness as a valley of 
shadows, and the world as a vanity fair, and despair as 
a giant, and death as a river, and heaven as a celestial 
city, whither the " shining ones" bear the souls of the 
glorified amid eternal hallelujahs. So true, so real are 



136 



THE CITIES 0E THE PAST. 



these things, they cease to be allegories; nor is there 
(as we have often tested) among the lowest and dullest a 
mind which does not respond to their truth. And then 
the great pervading thought of the book — that life is a 
passage onward and upward, a life wherein there are 
failings, and falls, and turnings back even to the last— 
but a life with its definite path of duty, its definite aim, 
its thrice-blessed definite end. This thought Bunyan 
gives us as we could perhaps never have had without 
him. How it fastened on us all in childhood, when we 
had the inappreciable fortune to read his book at the 
right time, when we were either young enough or 
old enough to enjoy it as the most wondrous of fairy 
tales, or the deepest of parables ! 

I have heard of a little child who was so seized upon 
by the book, that she actually succeeded in escaping 
from her nurse, and setting out on pilgrimage through 
a certain " wicket-gate" (of course, to a child's imagina- 
tion, the only " wicket-gate" in the world). After a 
time she came to a hill, which naturally represented 
" Difficulty," and on the summit was a house with stone 
lions on the gates : the house called Beautiful, beyond 
any mistake. A footman in livery imperfectly rendered 
the character of the proper porter, " Discretion ;" but 
fortunately three ladies in the drawing-room, to whom 
the poor little pilgrim was admitted, fully realized those 
of Christian's hostesses; and, after a " refection" of tea 
and cake, she was safely driven home to her anxious 
mamma in their carriage. Which of us could not have 
performed the same exploit at the mature age of six ? 
And at sixty, who would be wearied of the book, or 



A DAY AT THE DEAD SEA. 



137 



cease to pick out the wondrous metaphors which lie in 
this Golconda strewed about in reckless profusion? 
The chamber in the house called Beautiful, " looking 
towards the sun rising, the name of which chamber 
was Peace." The dreadful combat with the incar- 
nate Sin, when Apollyon " straddles all across" the 
way of life, and the poor pilgrim can advance 
no step till the foe is beaten off and conquered, after 
that same fearful fight upon the knees of which all 
our hearts bear the scars. Giant Despair's powerless- 
ness when he would fain " maul the prisoners" in 
Doubting Castle, as was his wont; but the sun was 
bright in the blue heavens, and the lark singing up in 
the sky, and he could not hurt them, "for sometimes in 
sunshiny weather Giant Despair has fits." The Delect- 
able Mountains, whence it was possible to see the gates 
of the Celestial City and the glory of its King for one 
brief hour ere the clouds rolled over the vision, and the 
pilgrims descended to tread the lowly paths beneath, 
strengthened for evermore by the memory of what they 
had once beheld. The Eeulah Land, where the struggles 
and the warfare are over, and the pilgrim dwells in 
peace ineffable, only waiting for God's messenger of 
death to summon him to the Celestial City, where his 
admittance is assured. And then the Dark Eiver, and the 
sinking heart and failing strength and trembling faith 
as the deep waters go over, even over, our souls. Is not 
this death — death such as we have seen it standing on 
the hither bank, watching with straining eyes after the 
beloved ones who have passed over, and whom a cloud 
receives for evermore out of our sight ? 



138 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



Poor pilgrims of Jordan resting by mined Jericho — 
that starry Eastern night where my tent was pitched 
near yours — let us trust that the faith which urged you 
on that weary way will give you comfort when that 
other Jordan must be passed — so cold, so deep, so fathom- 
less ! That faith and mine will be all one at last, when 
we climb up the further shore, and see overhead the 
golden towers ! 



A DAY AT ATHENS. 



139 



A DAY AT ATHENS. 

It was sunrise as we steamed up the Gulf of Salamis. 
The red clouds of morning were flaming over Parnes 
and Hymettus, and lighting up the hills of the Pelopon- 
nesus, range after range, far away into Arcadia and the 
Argolid. The bright blue waves were dancing joy- 
ously beneath our prow and through all the sapphire 
waters before us, even to " the rocky brow" 

Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis — 

where Xerxes sat on his silver-footed throne, and 
watched the fight which saved the liberties of the 
world. To the right of our track, above the slopes of 
olive woods, and with the sun for a background, rose 
the crowned Acropolis of Athens. 

A glorious scene as mortal eyes well might see. I 
paused on mounting the deck, knowing that such a 
sight was before me, and feeling as if I were entering 
some specially sacred temple, or joining in some holy 
rite. And truly it was a fane, grander than human 
hands ever built, which I beheld that summer morn — a 
fane with the crimson heavens for a dome, and the 
mountains for pillars, and the JEgean for its pavement 
of lapis lazuli, and the city of Socrates and Plato for 
its shrine of saints. 



140 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



I suppose it has happened to us all in life to find a 
few morning sunrise scenes paint themselves vividly on 
the memory, There were miserable sunrises, when we 
left some beloved home in the dreary winter's dawn, 
and, sick at heart, with shaking limbs, and eyes blinded 
with last night's tears, watched gloomily, through the 
trickling rain upon the carriage windows, the abortive 
sunrise shrink again behind a cloud. And there were 
blessed mornings when, in early youth, we rose from 
the sweet, dreamy rest, unbroken yet by pain or sorrow, 
and looked out on the dewy lawn, with the thrushes 
singing in the perfumed hawthorn, and the hares leap- 
ing and chasing each other over the glittering grass 
(safe for hours to come from molestation), and the 
golden sun rose in glory over the woods as we knelt to 
join our childlike praise with the hymns of the awaking 
birds and the incense of the opening flowers. And there 
were solemn, terrible sunrises, when the life which was 
our life, and which long had flickered in its waning 
light, had gone out at last, and left the world evermore 
for us darkened with a desolation no sunlight could 
break. How the daylight hurt us that morning, and 
the sounds of happy nature stunned and confused us, 
and the dead, cold despair and awe, which lay like a 
physical weight upon our hearts, seemed more terrible 
in the blank dawn — the forerunner of a thousand dreary 
dawns before we should meet again the one who was 
soul of our soul but a few hours ago ! 

Awful Mature! lovely but terrible! how she passes on 
her way inexorably, one day making us sharers in her 
joy and her triumph, and anon casting us off as aliens, 



A DAY AT ATHENS. 



141 



whose crushed hearts will not cause her chariot wheels 
to turn aside by a hair, nor our cry of agony make one 
voice in her great choral song of birds and winds and 
waters to falter or reply ! 

And then, again, there have been mornings like that 
of which I have spoken in the Bay of Salamis, morn- 
ings in bright southern lands, when the world seemed 
beautiful as Paradise, and the fresh blood coursed 
through our veins, invigorated by the sound sleep of 
travel, and the draughts of morning air radiant as 
liquid sunshine. Mornings such as these have I climbed 
dewy Alps, and ridden through chestnut-wooded Apen- 
nines, and gathered the wild lavender under the pines of 
Lebanon ; but never, I think, did the majesty and the 
glory of the " sun's gorgeous coming' ' strike on my 
sense's as on that summer dawn of my approach to 
Athens. 

Every country has, of course, a physiognomy of its 
own, which we learn only by degrees. Some scenes 
are so ostentatiously beautiful as to challenge admira- 
tion at first sight, and we admit their claims some- 
times with a burst of delight, sometimes with a sort 
of reluctant assent, as when we are called on to praise 
some haughty, handsome face, from which our hearts 
turn distrustfully. I think the beauty of the South 
generally is to our northern eyes, at first sight, of this 
antipathetic sort. If it be seen (as so often happens) 
in ill-health, or after some great sorrow, the effect of 
the glaring sunlight, the shadowless unfamiliar olive 
groves, the sharply- cut outlines of rocks and towers, 
the glittering metallic Mediterranean, nay, even the 



142 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



over-rich odour of the lemon and the orange — all these 
things impress us antagonistically. The sweet, soft 
Mother Nature we have known and loved seems left 
far away, and in her place stands a dark, bold woman, 
who throws back her veil, and says, with scornful tone 
and flashing eyes, " Look in my face, and answer — am 
I not beautiful ?" 

"When we journey through the lands of the North it 
is all the reverse of this. Each beauty has to be sought 
out, each feature studied. It might almost be said we 
must love the country first, and afterwards discover 
that it is fair. "We look round (say in Ireland, for in- 
stance, the most perfect contrast conceivable with the 
isles of the iEgean), and there is little before us which 
can be called scenery in any sense. The far-off moun- 
tains are low, and rounded like clouds on the horizon ; 
the lines of the landscape are faint and broad and dis- 
tant ; the foreground is only a mass of richest herbage 
and golden kingcups, into which the heavy-foliaged 
elms are drooping their boughs, and the white haw- 
thorns snowing with blossoms. Over the summer sky 
the large white cumuli float heavily. The sea itself 
never glitters, but shines soft and blue through a trans- 
parent haze, like an eye in which tears yet unfallen are 
gathering. 

To a stranger the view of such a land speaks, at the 
utmost, only of sweetness and repose, not of beauty or 
grandeur. But let him dwell therein, and commune 
for a time with that soft, rich tender Nature, and she 
will win on his heart even like some gentle lady in a 
happy home where her presence is an atmosphere of 



A DAT AT ATHENS. 



143 



love and peace; and where, as lie watches the little 
children clustering round her, and the old father leaning 
on her arm, and her smile meeting her husband's loving 
eyes, he sees at last that " her face is as the face of an 
angel," for there rests thereon the visible benediction of 
God. 

But the South also wins us at last. The sunshine, 
which only dazzled us at first, fills our veins by degrees. 
"We lift up our drooping heads and gaze around, and 
the bright, full tide of southern life flows round us 
and draws us into new human interests, and all the 
history, all the poetry of the past, echoes in the memory 
as one grand name surges up after another. At last 
the work is done. We have gained a new home and 
country. Henceforth evermore we have two phases of 
existence, and can pass from one to another as each may 
pall or pain us. We are free citizens of two realms of 
beauty and delight. 

No monotony is there, however, in North or South 
as if all were known when one country is known. 
Those who have not travelled, and who find all southern 
descriptions made up of the same olive woods, and 
orange groves, and blue seas, and cloudless skies, little 
deem how the mysterious individuality of each land 
asserts itself through these ever-recurring features, even 
as varied human souls through similarly shaped and 
coloured eyes and lips and hair. The atmosphere alone 
is a source of infinite diversity. At the distance, which 
in England makes a mountain a cold, neutral grey, in 
Italy it is a lilac of such inexpressible, ethereal soft- 
ness, that I suppose no one has ever beheld the Apen- 



144 



THE CITIES 0E THE PAST. 



nines for the first time across the Roman Campagna 
without a cry of joy. It is like a vision of Mount 
Meru to a Hindoo — the hill which, could mortal man 
attain, he would find himself beyond the reach of the 
God of Death in an eternal Paradise. How they rise 
up behind Adrian's gorgeous home and the wooded 
slopes of Tiyoli, up into the translucent sky, higher 
and higher, range behind range, till Leonessa lifts her 
snowy crown above all, and then they sink down lower 
and lower far as eye can see, even to lonely Soracte in 
the uttermost horizon ! Did ever shades like these fall 
on the brown hills of northern lands? We may all 
know that a mountain may be sublime; but to learn 
how beautiful it is we must go to Eome. Yet more, 
the atmosphere has other changes of hue in store* That 
same distance, which in England is grey and in Italy 
divinely opal, in Egypt is green or golden, as it may 
chance to reveal corn-fields or desert-sands. There is 
actually no aerial perspective. I have stood on the 
Citadel of Cairo, and across the whole enormous city 
and its suburbs, full ten miles away, I have seen the 
young crops of corn and maize and rice as brightly 
green as if they were beneath my feet. 

The colouring of Greece is utterly different from that of 
Italy. The opal Apennines of the distance are replaced 
by brown and purple mountains, grand in their magni- 
tude, but so clearly cut in the shadowless atmosphere 
that we deem them frowning over our heads when they 
are many a league away. And the foreground, the glow- 
ing foreground of Italy, where 



A DAY AT ATHENS. 



145 



The fruit-trees bend their laden boughs 

O'er the fields with harvest gold, 
And the rich vines wreathe from tree to tree, 

Like garlands in temples old. 

And over all falls the glad sunlight, 

So warm, so bright, so clear ; 
The earth shines out like an emerald set 

In the diamond atmosphere. 

This is nowhere to be seen in Greece. There is a bare 
and rugged floor for the beautiful land ; and it is said 
that the most assiduous care has failed to produce in the 
royal gardens of Athens even a few feet of that soft 
turf which carpets the homely plains and downs of 
England. 

Olive-groves and vineyards line the road from the 
Piraeus, and Hybla and Hymettus lie in front. Sud- 
denly the view sweeps open, and there ! "What is that ? 
The Temple of Theseus — and there ! the grand, sub- 
lime Acropolis, with the columns of the shattered Par- 
thenon and Erechtheum, like a mural crown upon her 
stately crest. As she stands amid the huge heathery 
mountains around, she looks like a royal maiden amid 
her giant guards ; and we could dream that even now 
Pallas Athene might descend from her blue empyrean 
upon that favoured spot. There is no disappointment in 
the first sight of Athens any more than of Jerusalem. 
As the one is all solemn, so is the other all noble. 
JEschylus, and Sophocles, and Anaxagoras, and Socrates, 
and Pericles, and Cimon, and Phidias, and Praxiteles 
may have sung, and taught, and ruled, and laboured 
here. Their ghosts may haunt our visions with no dis- 

L 



146 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST* 



honour as we climb that lofty rock or rest by ever-now- 
ing Calirrhoe. 

Modern Athens is poor and simple, but not ignoble or 
sordid ; and every here and there as I passed were 
glimpses of ancient wonders recognizable at a glance. 
The Temple of the Winds seen down the vista even now 
named -ZEolus Street, the Choragic Monument of Ly si- 
crates, and ever and always overhead the glorious 
Parthenon. 

It is well for us, when our chances of beholding the 
most interesting objects happen to fall when our health 
and circumstances are such, that it is possible for us freely 
to give way to our enjoyment or our admiration; and 
not blend those sentiments with miserable personal sensa- 
tions, which will evermore connect themselves in memory 
with the scene — a choking cough, perhaps, with St. 
Peter's, or a fit of ague with Baalbec. It has happened 
to me to behold Milan Cathedral for the first time, when 
so wearied after a day and night's travel, that I can 
recall a feeling of actual animosity against the glittering 
pile of snowy spires which compelled me to lift my 
tired and heated eyeballs to glance at it. But the 
approach to Athens happened under happier auspices ; 
for it was the return to civilized life, after an adven- 
turous and solitary journey through Egypt and Syria, 
wherein not a few hardships had been borne, and diffi- 
culties surmounted; and I was free to repose on my 
harvest of recollections, and read the pile of letters and 
papers which awaited me, and draw fresh supplies from 
the bank (grievously needed, as all sorts of mishaps and 
tempting excursions had brought me to my last napoleon), 



A DAY AT ATHEISTS. 



147 



and enjoy thoroughly those mundane satisfactions of bath 
and breakfast, which by no means fail to enhance our 
sense of the merits of either art or nature. When I sat 
down at the table drawn to the window of my room, 
and saw straight before me, not a mile off, the Acropolis 
and the Parthenon, and to the west the whole blue Gulf 
of Saiamis shining in the morning sun — truly I was in 
a mood to enjoy anything, from antique associations 
with demigods and philosophers, to the glass of Samian 
wine I drank for the satisfaction of quoting to myself 
the " Isles of Greece," and testing the discrimination of 
Anacreon. 

An hour later, the historian of Modern Greece — most 
learned and kind of cicerones — was, with his charming 
wife, welcoming me to Athens, and bidding me dispose 
of his time for the day's explorations. 

Oh, how pleasant are such days in life to look back 
upon ! jSTot dear and tender, like those in which we 
have first found a true heart evermore to be bound in 
links of friendship with our own ; not sacred, like those 
in which our souls gained one step consciously of that 
infinite stair, for whose ascent we were born ; yet still 
bright and beautiful, and far from unhallowed days, are 
those in which the great triumphs of art or nature are 
revealed to us, or the memories of the mighty dead come 
thronging round us, as we tread the lands they glorified. 
We stood on the Acropolis, a short steep ascent, a 
fortified and guarded gateway, and then we climbed the 
ruined stair of the once beautiful Propyleeum. The 
marble columns facing the portico are still nearly all 
standing, though devoid of their capitals, and the ruins 

l 2 



148 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



of the chamber of the right wing, once containing the 
paintings of Polygnotus. At the base can be seen the 
pedestals where stood the statues of Harmodius and 
Aristogiton. But the charm of the whole building lies 
still, as it must always have lain, in the tiny temple 
which forms the left wing, and bears, after its two 
thousand years of duration, the aspect of a chamber of 
snow, a sport of the Frost Giants, ready to melt away in 
the morning sun. It is indeed a dream — a poem in 
stone — this temple of Apteral Yictory. Here, within 
the narrow marble walls, with loveliest Ionic porticoes, 
stood a statue of the goddess who, elsewhere, was ever 
adorned with wide and outspread wings, ready to hover 
over the field of battle. But in this spot she was wing- 
less. Yictory, once alighted on the proud hill of Athens, 
should never leave it more ! Only multitudes of winged 
messengers, whose flying forms made the frieze of her 
temple, bore to her the tidings of all the triumphs of 
Athenian arms. Was it not a dream — a play of fancy 
— a sonnet in marble — rather than a temple ? Doubt- 
less there were rites of some sort performed here on 
fitting occasion ; but how far away must they have been 
from anything we could denominate worship, or liken 
to the praise or invocation of a Being seriously believed 
to exist ! Nothing opens up to us more the vast gulf 
between the half-playful religion of the Greek and the 
solemn creed of the Jew, than the contemplation of this 
little fane, and the effort to reproduce the state of feeling 
under which it could have been erected. Pallas Athene 
might have been believed in by the ancients as firmly 
as that other Virgin Queen of Heaven is believed in by 



A DAT AT ATHENS. 



149 



their descendants now. Theseus was as true a patron, 
perhaps a truer hero than St. Greorge, or St. Denis, or 
St. Jago were patron saints. But where are we to 
place this Wingless Victory in the categories of human 
veneration ? To cut down a tree and carve it into an 
image, and then fall down and worship the "block, seems 
less amazing than to take a metaphor and work it up 
into an allegory, and then build for it a a temple, and 
offer it sacrifice. 

Now we stand upon the open Acropolis. The ground 
is one mass of shattered marble, thick and deep as the 
shingle on a northern shore. It is the sea of all-de- 
stroying Time, which has beaten on that mighty rock 
for two thousand years, and strewed around the wrecks 
of the finest works of human hands. No spot on earth 
can have been more fitted than this to be an altar whereon 
man made his highest offerings of the Beautiful before 
heaven. Not too far away above the earth to be still a 
part thereof, and yet raised enough for solitude and 
grandeur — not too vast, and yet of ample extent ; with 
the huge brown hills around, and the translucent sea 
below — the summit of the Acropolis is the natural 
ground for a temple. And there on its summit rises 
still the loveliest fane man ever planned — the Parthe- 
non. The marble columns, tinged with a golden yellow, 
as if by the sunsets of two thousand years stand out 
against the sky and azure iEgean from whichever side 
we approach them, and thereby acquire a beauty alone 
sufficient to divide by an immeasurable distance the true 
Greek temple from all the miserable, murky imitations 
we thrust down amid our vulgar and gloomy streets. All 



150 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



the noblest of the ancient fanes were thus placed on lofty 
eminences — the Parthenon, the Temple of Minerva in 
JEgina, of Nemesis at Phamnus, of Apollo at Phigaleia, 
and of Minerva at Sunium. That of Theseus, on the 
lower plain, was raised on a high basement, though 
ascended by only two steps, in obedience to the traditional 
dictum that the greater gods alone should have three 
steps to their temples, and the demigods but two. In like 
manner, the great Olympium stood in a vast elevated 
enclosure, so that the approaching worshipper saw even 
the bases of the columns above his head, and the blue 
sky shining through their spaces. Even were the 
Doric porticoes of the Parthenon not of the purest and 
noblest proportions and beautiful Pentelic marble, the 
mere position in which they stand in that radiant atmo- 
sphere would make them surpass everything we build 
in such miserable places litre. 

But their intrinsic beauty, as well as that due to 
situation, is of a kind vainly to be attempted to be 
described in words, or reproduced by our mechanic 
stone-cutting. All the world knows they are the perfec- 
tion of proportion ; but I believe it is hardly understood, 
save by artists, how the measurements of heights and 
circumference have but a share in the ineffable grace 
which results from the curves and swellings of every 
portion. We habitually draw Greek temples (and build 
them, too, ) as if they were all a series of straight lines, 
or at best with an ugly bulge for the entasis of the 
column. Now there is not one straight line — one inch 
of straight line — in all the Parthenon ! The steps 
curve inwards and upwards, the columns swell and 



A DAY AT ATHENS. 



151 



bend pyramidically, the architraves and every moulding 
of the pediment are sweeping lines of grace, manifestly 
cut by a master-hand (and, in some cases,) even after 
the blocks have been fixed in their places. The eye 
rests on it all in unconscious gratification, merely fol- 
lowing sweep after sweep, and at last discovering that 
they are curves, and not right lines. 

We found ourselves in the great cella of the temple, 
at whose further end once stood the gold and ivory 
statue of Pallas, thirty-nine feet high, the master-piece 
of Phidias. It was on the golden shield of this glorious 
work that the sculptor wrought his own likeness, which 
gave occasion to one of the finest similes we have in- 
herited from the ancients — whether from Cicero or any 
other I know not — namely, that God likewise hath so 
indelibly traced his image on his workmanship of man's 
nature, " ut nemo delere posset aut divellere qui totam 
statuam non imminueret'' (that none might efface or 
erase it without destroying the whole statue.) 

On the pavement of the temple may still be traced 
the marks of the pedestal; but how vainly did the 
imagination strive to reconstruct that wondrous colossal 
form which once rose there in all the majesty of su- 
premest art, the calm, beneficent face shining down, 
the ideal of Wisdom wrought by earth's mightiest 
sculptor ! 

Entering the Parthenon through the eight -columned 
portico of the western front, how hard was it, standing 
between these ruined walls, open on either side of the 
mountains and the sea, and bearing on their yet re- 
maining flanges the traces of the paltry frescoes of the 



152 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



Christian church, into which the temple had been con- 
verted — how hard was it to call up again the day when 
the tumultuous Demos of Athens in her glory had 
thronged the splended hall, and Pericles, standing by in 
his Olympian beauty, with Aspasia beside him, had 
watched while his friend Phidias discomfited ail his 
envious foes, by proving that the vast treasure — the 
ton of gold — the city had given to her goddess, had 
been faithfully wrought into the gorgeous armour 
wherewith she was clothed ! And how, while Pericles 
stood there, the representative for all time of the 
statesman, and Phidias, of the artist, there stood also 
among that crowd the friend of both, greater and 
nobler than either, whose power lives still, while the 
works of Phidias have become shattered fragments, and 
the empire of Pericles has passed away for ever — how 
Socrates stood there, and doubtless beside him Plato, 
and Alcibiades, and Agathon, and Krito, and Aristode- 
mus, and Simmias ; while near them, perchance, Aris- 
tophanes stood smiling and meditating that deepest of 
his sarcasms — 

Thou see'st how good a thing it is to learn 
There are no Gods, Phidippides ! 

And Ictinus, the architect of that loveliest fane, looked 
round like a god upon his work, " and saw that it was 
good." 

Truly, if we could but gain one glimpse of what 
the Parthenon contained that day of Phidias' s trial, it 
would be a vision indeed. What were those Greeks, 
that they should have risen to such heights — nay, to 



A DAY AT ATHENS. 



153 



dwell habitually upon such summits of perfected art, 
as men in later times have never once ascended ? We 
may have preference for this or that modern or mediaeval 
sculptor, or painter, or poet, or architect, and some of 
them may rightly claim that superiority defined by 
Longinus as belonging to him who soars highest above 
him whose night is best sustained ; — but it remains that, 
for perfection, the world has never beheld any works 
capable of vying for a moment with those of Phidias, 
and Praxiteles, and Ictinus, and Sophocles, and doubt- 
less of Xeuxis and Parrhasius, also, could we redeem 
their paintings for equal test. There is an explanation — 
and a true one — commonly found in the fact that nations, 
like individuals, have the different faculties of humanity 
in different proportion — that the Greeks had the aesthetic 
power, as the Jews had the religious, and the Romans 
the moral ; so that the world ever since has taken its 
art from Athens, its faith from Jerusalem, and its civil 
laws from Rome. At the present day there is much of 
a similar distinction existing among nations : the intel- 
lectual depth of the German, the ruling genius of the 
Anglo-Saxon, the artistic taste of the Italian. And at 
the extremities of Europe and Asia, we find nations dif- 
fering from all nearest to them — the Celt, in his religious 
fervour, the Chinese, in his indifference to all religious 
aspirations. "Whatever the conditions may be under 
which these various features of our common nature 
become most prominently developed, the Greeks mani- 
festly fulfilled those under which the Beauty-creating 
power arrived at its culmination. Yet this will not 
wholly explain the mystery of ancient supremacy. 



154 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



There is not only the peculiar beauty of Grecian art to 
be considered, but that element of finality which makes it 
differ in kind as well as in degree from the works of later 
times, and which it shares in a measure with the art of 
other ancient nations. I know not if I can make myself 
clearly understood, but it seems to me that through all 
the works of ante- Christian times, we may discover a 
certain completeness, a perfection after its kind, which 
in each case excludes the idea of any added beauty or 
power. Such as the artist could conceive, that he did 
— and did it so perfectly as to leave nothing more to be 
desired, or even permitted. To a Grecian temple not 
a column or a single stone could be added ; to a Greek 
tragedy not a line. Take an antique bust, male or 
female, and try to substitute for the calm " ox-like " 
eyes, which evidently filled the orbits it represented, 
such other eyes as we see every day in our own land, 
full of untold aspirations, and longings, and possibilities 
of infinite loving and infinite suffering — eyes into which 

Whoso gazes 
Faints, entangled in their mazes : 

try to place eyes like those beneath the old Roman or 
Grecian brow, and it would seem as if they would 
calcine the very marble. There is an electric light in 
them, -even when quenched and faded with many tears, 
such as never shone out in elder time. Everything 
speaks with the same voice. There was no self-intro- 
spection, no morbid self- depreciation, no hypocritical 
pretence at an unfelt humility. The old Greek or 
Roman said in all his actions — "It is good to be just, 
brave, patriotic ; to make beautiful edifices, and statues, 



A DAY AT ATHEXS. 



loo 



and poems, and orations. I am just, and brave, and a 
patriot, and my works are beautiful. And so Antoninus 
thanks God for his own virtue ; and Cicero says it was 
a fortunate day for Rome in which he was born to be 
her counsel ; and Ovid closes his poem with the boast 
that he has secured fame through half the circle of 
eternity. 

But this whole phase of life has passed away. If a 
man even think himself perfect, he dare not say so, 
knowing his claim will meet but scorn. In all his 
works there is incompleteness, irregularity. His dramas 
have no severe unities, or preserve them at cost of all 
originality ; his statues and pictures are lacking in 
beauty, or else cold imitations. His temples, wherein 
the fullest force of the new power in the world has 
burst forth, are beautiful indeed — sublimely beautiful ; 
but they are never complete and finished like the 
Grecian fanes. To the noblest of them may be added 
yet a spire, a chapel, or tower, indefinitely — almost for 
ever. Like the old Bom an or Greek, he sees it is good 
to be just, brave, and generous, and the creator of 
beautiful things. But the cry of his soul is — " "Would 
that I were better than I am ! Would that I could 
express in my works that divine beauty, after which 
my spirit yearns ; but on which mortal eyes have never 
gazed !" Thus he struggles on — all imperfect, and con- 
scious of imperfection in his character; yet striving 
after something nobler and holier "with groanings that 
cannot be uttered," and working out labours of art, for 
ever unsatisfying and incomplete ; yet bearing the germ 
of something higher than Greek or Roman knew. Even 



156 



THE CITIES 0E THE PAST, 



his countenance bears the marks of the change. There 
is nowhere the exquisite proportion and chiselled per- 
fection of the earlier type among the more highly deve- 
loped races. The most regular forms and features now 
belong to Easterns rather than Europeans, and among 
Europeans to the lower rather than the higher nations. 
But in losing regularity and proportion there has come 
in a new element, making often ill- formed features 
nobler than the most perfect ones of old. The perfect 
balance of the Greek type seemed always to exclude 
progression; it was at the best cold, and fixed, and 
somewhat hard. The face of many a modern man or 
woman, with no pretence to equal beauty, raises our 
thoughts and warms the blood in our hearts, as if we 
beheld the foregleams of an immortal day. 

If this great difference be true concerning ancient 
and modern feeling ; if, indeed, Christianity has been 
to the life of humanity what regeneration is to the life 
of the individual — the beginning of an existence far less 
complete after its kind, because aspiring after an in- 
finite height ; then there is explained to us much which 
else seems inexplicable. And if modern art is ever to 
bear to modern life the relation of ancient art to ancient 
life, then it must in some way embody this mysterious 
change : it must not give us perfection but progres- 
siveness ; not completeness of mortal plenitude, but 
rather — 

The prophecy and intimation, 
The faint and feeble adumbration, 
Of that great world of light which lies 
Behind all human destinies. 



A DAY AT ATHENS. 



157 



In a singular way architecture forms the exponent, 
above all other arts, of the difference between ancient 
and modern thought. The Grecian temple was a house 
for gods, whereto they might descend from Olympus, 
and take up their abode. The Gothic church is man's 
place of prayer, where he raises the clasped hands of 
the vaulted roof in supplication, or points the finger of 
faith in the soaring spire up to the sky. The Grecian 
temple was of simplest unity of form. A few terms 
suffice us now to define the form of every one of them, 
whether circular or rectangular, with six columns in 
the portico, or eight or ten, in antis, or prostyle, or 
peripteral. Add a few measurements, and the mention 
of the style, whether Doric, or Ionic, or Corinthian, 
and the whole plan of the temple is revealed. But who 
can reduce the infinite variety of a Christian cathedral 
to any such simple formula? On its common outline 
of a cross every conceivable addition and variation has 
been made, till it is all a labyrinth from crypt to tower. 
Thus surely also are our minds varied and multifarious, 
and full of labyrinthine involutions, as compared with 
those of men of the whole world. The most acute and 
divinely-gifted Greek was a simple being at heart, com- 
pared to the complex nature of any fully developed 
character of our times ; and if by chance now we meet 
with one remarkable for single-heartedness and simpli- 
city, instantly we say — " He seems to belong to an 
earlier age ; he is like an old Greek, or an old Roman." 

To the north of the Parthenon stands the remaining 
great relic of the Acropolis — the Erechtheum, with the 
beautiful portico of the Pandroseum supported by the 



158 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



Caryatids. How lovely these figures are there is no 
need to tell to any who have seen the one robbed for 
onr Elgin gallery. The whole temple must have been 
singularly beautiful, with its triple porticoes and Ionic 
columns, the most perfect ever built. Here, as the 
legend runs, did Poseidon and Pallas contend for the 
possession of Attica, and the marks of the sea-god's 
trident, and the salt spring which flowed at his com- 
mand, long attested his efforts ; while close beside grew 
Minerva's olive-tree, the parent of all the olives in the 
land, and so filled with the life the goddess had be- 
stowed, that, when burned down to the earth by the 
Persians, it threw forth within two days a fresh stem 
a cubit long. Here also, in the western part of the 
temple, were preserved the sacred serpent, the silver- 
footed throne of Xerxes, the sword of Mardonius, and the 
golden lamp which, burning night and day, was fed with 
oil but once a year. But the glory of the shrine was 
the image of Minerva Polias, carved in olive-wood, and 
affirmed to have fallen down from heaven. The sacred 
Peplus was borne as an offering to this statue, in the 
quinquennial Panathenaic procession, whose sculptured 
memorial we behold in the bas-reliefs of the frieze torn 
by Lord Elgin from the Parthenon. Can we afford to 
smile at this thought, of the Athenian people bearing 
their tributary robe to that poor wooden image, and 
preferring her to this honour, because of her supposed 
celestial origin, over the gorgeous Minerva Parthenos of 
ivory and gold, in the Parthenon, and the gigantic 
Minerva Promachus of bronze, in the open Acropolis, 
whose gilded spear glittered away all down the gulf of 



A DAY AT ATHEISTS. 



159 



Salamis ? Truly, till Madonnas, old and new, cease to 
receive jewels, and robes, and candles, from Christian 
sovereigns and nations, we need not cast much, scorn 
upon Athens and her Yirgin Goddess. True, Minerva 
was Goddess of War, as well as of the arts of Peace. 
Eut is there not in Brittany a certain church, dedicated 
to Notre Dame de la Hatne, whither men go to implore 
vengeance upon their enemies ? " The most Catholic 
King" embroidering a petticoat for Mary of Nazareth, 
was hardly a great advance upon Pericles heading the 
procession bearing the Peplus to the image of Minerva 
Polias. 

The remaining ruins of the Acropolis detained us but 
a little time, and soon we were wandering round beneath 
the hill, past the caves called the Prison of Socrates, 
and the ruined temple of Triptolemus, by the banks of 
Iiyssus, and the magnificent theatre of lierodes Atticus, 
the first great private ptilantliropist of history, who 
spent the enormous treasures he had discovered in build- 
ing baths, bakehouses, and theatres for the people. Oh, 
saddest science of political economy ! must we ever pause 
to question whether deeds of splendid liberality and 
generosity have done harm rather than good ; and, not 
guided by the one principle of "helping men to help 
themselves," have tended to degrade and weaken those 
they sought to benefit, till, like the Eoman populace, 
"Panem et Circenses" became the sole cry of those 
whose pride of citizenship had once outweighed the 
pride of haughtiest kings ? 

Now we have passed through the arch of Adrian, 
with its double inscription, " This is Athens, the old 



160 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



city of Theseus, " and on the other side, " This is Athens, 
the new city of Adrian." And near at hand stood the 
temple which it was the glory of Adrian's heart to have 
completed after Pisistratus and Antiochus, and a whole 
associated body of princes in later times had striven to 
do so in vain. It is hard to conceive what must have 
been the grandeur of this building in its prime. On a 
wide, open plain, near the banks of Ilyssus, was formed 
a raised platform, supported by a buttressed wall four 
stadia (half a mile) in circumference. On this periholus 
were erected altars, statues, and other fitting adorn- 
ments, and in the midst rose the magnificent temple, 
surrounded by its hundred and twenty-four columns of 
Pentelic marble, each column sixty feet in length, and 
six feet in diameter — a stupendous forest of marble 
trees! The building was, as it is called, decastyle, 
having ten columns in each portico, and of these there 
were four rows in depth, while double colonnades lined 
the long-extended flanks. The roof was open to the 
blue sky, where Olympian Jove had his abode, and on 
the angles of the pediment, doubtless, hovered his 
eagles, even as we yet may see on the bas-reliefs of 
another temple of the time, preserved in the Capitol 
at Rome. The Corinthian order, of which the temple 
was built, would seem the fittest of all for an edifice of 
the kind — not meant to be sublimely chaste and perfect 
like the Parthenon, but rich and gorgeous and im- 
posing as befitted the " Father of gods and men." 
Vitruvius tells us that the Doric typifies the pro- 
portions of stalwart manhood, the Ionic those of the 
matron, and the Corinthian those of that fair young 



A DAY AT ATHENS. 



161 



maiden on whose grave Callimachus, the architect, 
found the acanthus growing through a basketful of 
flowers left there by her mourning mother. But this 
poetic comparison of styles and proportions seems to me 
to fail wofully in expressing the feeling conveyed by 
the different orders. The Doric is essentially the fitting 
order for the fane o2 the Virgin Pallas — so severely 
chaste and noble. The Ionic suited well the Ephesian 
Diana, or such dream * in marble as the Apteral Yictory. 
But, for Jove, the king of the gods, or Baal, the great 
sun deity, there would seem nothing so well fitting as 
the magnificent Corinthian — so stately and rich and 
grand. This Olympium must have been to the ancient 
world what St. Peter's is to us in our time — the place 
where the sense of the magnificent is raised to its 
height, and that side of religious feeling is excited 
which is of the more outward sort, and finds its proper 
expression in Paeans and Te Deums. 

Alas! of all that glorious fane only fifteen columns 
now remain, thirteen in one group together, and two 
others alone at the opposite extremity. Till a month 
or two before my arrival these two had had a brother 
standing between them ; but he had fallen in an earth- 
quake, and the stately shaft lay shattered on the ground. 
Very soon will the Olympium of Athens be like that of 
Corinth : — 

Two or three columns and many a stone, 
Marble and granite with moss overgrown. 

Shall we add, with Byron — 

Out upon time, it will leave no more 

Of the things that were than the things before ; 

M 



162 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



Out upon time, who for ever will leave 

But enough of the past for the future to grieve 

O'er the things that have been and the things which must be ; 

What we have seen our sons shall see — 

Remnants of things which have past away, 

Fragments of stone reared by creatures of clay. 

It becomes but natural to quote Byron in Greece, 
where he has left the purest of his fame. Even as we 
turned away from the temple, I read his familiar name 
in Greek characters on a street we were entering ; and 
my kind guide, who had preceded him to Greece, and 
fought through the war by his side, had much to tell of 
the cool, sound sense and clear insight into the pur- 
poses of those around him, which mingled and con- 
trasted with his wild enthusiasm, as if he were two 
different men at different hours. 

It needs not to follow out much further the story of 
my first happy day at Athens. Left alone to rest before 
the late dinner to which I was hospitably bidden, I soon 
wandered out again by myself to explore still further 
the chief places of interest ; and, leaving the Temple of 
Theseus to be entered on a later day, I found my way 
to the Agora and the Pnyx. There, on the little plat- 
form, ascended by two or three steps, hewn out of the 
living rock, had stood Pericles and Demosthenes, sway- 
ing the turbulent hosts which filled the vast space 
below with their mighty words, even as the wind waves 
and rocks the trees of the forest. It is all lonely now. 
Not a living being was in sight, and all that surging 
multitude were replaced by the wild flowers growing 
freely and undisturbed where once their eager feet had 
trampled all the ground. 



A DAY AT ATHENS. 163 

Thus I wandered on, turning towards the Acropolis, 
and stood under a cliff of rocks, on whose face steps and 
seats had here and there been cut. The circular space 
in front, of some half acre in extent, was closed in 
below, on the lower slopes of the hills, by a range of 
smaller rocks, forming a natural theatre, and not for- 
bidding the eye to pass over them to the wide plains 
below — to the Temple of Theseus and the olive groves 
beyond, and the grand line of Parneses sweeping down 
towards Marathon. To the left, beyond the Piraeus, lay 
the whole gulf of Salamis and the hills of Corinth and 
Achaia. I sat down in that spot— as lonely a one as the 
Pnyx, and bearing a still deeper interest ; for this was 
the Areopagus. Here, where, in the dawn of history, 
the grey fathers of Athens had held their solemn 
councils — here had stood St. Paul, and these rocks over 
my head had echoed that oration whose interest will 
never pass away, while the of themes the eloquence of 
Pericles and Demosthenes and Isocrates have become 
things of a bygone world. Por ever must that question 
return, Is He — He, the unnameable Presence, to whom 
not only the altars of Athens, but all the hearts of men, 
bear a dedication — is He, indeed, the " Unknown God" 
— unknown to wisest souls then — unknown to us all for 
evermore ? Or did, indeed, that great and valiant soul 
of the Apostle learn of Him, and reveal Him, making 
Him henceforth (as men have boasted) known to the 
Christian child as Plato and Socrates never knew Him ? 
Surely the truth lies in a deeper conception than we 
readily frame of the relation of human thought to that 
transcendant knowledge. Surely we shall come at last 

m 2 



164 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST, 



to understand that, though there was a knowledge 
which the Athenians lacked, and which Panl brought to 
them, yet also God is never wholly unknown to His 
creatures, be they never so humble of intellect ; nor 
ever wholly known by them, be they never so e]ear of 
brain, and confident of belief, and ready to define His 
awful nature in creeds which Christian children may, 
indeed, repeat, but which the spirit of Plato in heaven 
might shudder to. hear. True as they are grand were 
the words of England's greatest divine: " Dangerous 
it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into the 
doings of the Most High, whom, although to know be 
life, and joy to make mention of His name, yet our 
soundest knowledge is to know that we know Him not 
as, indeed, He is, neither can know Him ; and that our 
safest eloquence concerning Him is our silence, whereby 
we confess without confession that His glory is inex- 
plicable, His greatness beyond our capacity and reach."*' 
Again I wandered on, and found myself beside a 
fountain, round which a group of young women were 
drawing water. As each one filled her classic-shaped 
vessel she raised it on her head, and stood up as graceful 
as one of the old marble Caryatids in the Pandroseum 
above us. There is certainly something hereditary in 
the motions of different nations. The Roman women 
to this day, with their proud busts and noble heads, 
seem like the massive statues of their own sculptors 
vivified. And in Egypt the poor labourers in the fields 
work in strings in the precise angular attitude, with 
b ackscurved inward rather than outward, which seems 

* Hooker's Eccles. Po?., book i. 



A DAY AT ATHENS, 



165 



to us so unnatural in the paintings and bas-reliefs copied 
into our books from the tombs. Yery friendly and plea- 
sant were these Athenian maidens as I sat down by their 
fountain, and asked to drink out of one of their water- 
jars, and made the best of the few words we could 
interchange. There is something wonderfully pleasant, 
I think, in the remembrance of those little kindly deeds 
received from those with whom we have no one tie save 
that of our common humanity, but who acknowledge 
that claim freely and simply. Living in England, espe- 
cially in the country, we have a definite relation of 
friendship, or acquaintanceship, or of employer or 
employed, with all whom we meet ; or if there chance 
to be a stranger pass our door, the fact of his leing a 
stranger constitutes a sort of claim to attention. In 
London all this is altered, and we see around us thou- 
sands of whom we know nothing, nor expect to know 
anything in this world, save that they are men and 
women hurrying on their way between the same solemn 
gates of Birth and Death through which we- also go. 
And out of that sense of simple human brotherhood, 
which the strong tide of life surging around us brings 
to our hearts, we gain, perhaps, a warmer desire than 
elsewhere to bless these unknown brothers and sisters, 
the children of our Father — 

Men my brothers, men the workers, 
Ever working something new. 

With the glorious future before them, here and here- 
after — 

What they have done bnt the earnest 
Of the things which they shall do. 



166 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



But, far away from the crowds of great cities, in some 
quiet walk in foreign lands, how good it is to have some 
one approach us with gentle words and looks, and inter- 
change a few bright, kindly glances ere we part to meet 
never again on this side eternity ! How often I have 
thanked in my heart the sweet Tuscan contadine, who 
used to come and sit beside me wherever I rested on 
the flowery banks of their vineyards, and beg so cour- 
teously to know if their doing so would not disturb me ; 
and the grave old Turks who have forgotten their 
solemnity of gait in haste to save me from the trampling 
of an unseen camel ; and the Arab women and Syrians 
and Maronites, who have playfully stroked my shoulder 
when they found I could not converse with them, as 
much as to say, " Never mind ; though you don't know 
Arabic, I like you all the same !" An hour or two later, 
bathed and refreshed, I was seated at my kind friend's 
table, listening to stores of information concerning 
Greece, ancient and modern, politics, and art, and lite- 
rature, his own recondite discoveries concerning the 
philosophic school which flourished at Athens for nine 
centuries on Plato's endowment, and the newest books 
which had issued from the London press while I had 
been wandering in the East. By-and-by the stately 
gentleman in green velvet and gold, and huge white 
petticoat, who might have been a chief of Klephts, but 
was only a footman, brought us coffee, and left us to 
visit a noble library, and inspect a unique cabinet of 
coins of the Eastern empire, and talk to pleasant Greek 
ladies coming in to pass the evening. Much laughter 
and many jests and good stories dimly return to memory 



A DAT AT ATHENS. 



167 



the only one clearly remembered being that of a party 
of country servants in the British Museum, who asked 
whether the broken metopes of the Elgin Gallery were 
not intended as a memorial of the dreadful mutilations 
occasioned by railway accidents / 

Good-night ! good-night ! thank you for my happy 
day at Athens. 

" Shall I come for you in the morning," said my 
host, " and take you a walk through the groves of the 
Academe ?" 



168 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



THE CITY OF PEACE. 

It has been often said that we English are all of us 
made on the principle of our beloved country, and are 
so many little human Islands. We like to be " girded 
by an inviolate sea" of reserve and dignity which 
nobody has a right to traverse unchallenged ; and we 
fondly flatter ourselves that our characters rise over this 
gulf of demeanour as imposing in the eyes of the world 
as the white cliffs of Albion to an approaching foe. It 
is not very wise nor very humane, this morgue Britan- 
nique ; and it is to be hoped that the time approaches 
when we shall discover that certain principles are as 
applicable to social as to commercial affairs, and that a 
passport system, whether of official documents or formal 
introductions, is equally cumbrous and superfluous. If 
we expect our import trade of pleasant feelings and 
kindly actions to be of much value, we must ourselves 
open a free export trade in similar commodities, and not 
confine our commerce to "Wenham ice and refrigerators. 

There are, however, some occasions in which it is to 
be desired that we should be as much insulated one from 
another as possible. "When we visit any work of nature 
or art qualified to draw forth strong feelings of awe 
or admiration, the presence of even a solitary friend 
had far better be dispensed with. "Who can be surety 
for a friend ? "Who can answer that he will not be 



THE CITY OF PEACE. 



169 



guilty of the enormity of suggesting that we are catching 
cold in this damp cathedral, or wandering too far on 
that mountain ? Nay, who can answer for himself that 
he might not be so misguided as to make the same obser- 
vation to his companion ? 

But a party of friends to see ruins or galleries — oh, 
how bitter a thing it is ! There is, of course, an end of 
all hope of obtaining a true impression of the object 
visited, and the most we can aspire to is a vague con- 
ception of what we ought to have felt had we been left 
to ourselves. I dare say half my readers have come 
away from seeing the Colosseum by moonlight with that 
amount of sublime emotions derivable from hearing 
all round them — as they climbed the giant corridors 
and watched the light playing over the ruined walls — 
the snatches of dialogues inevitable on such occasions : 
" How do you do, Mrs. A— ? " " What awful stairs ! " 
"How lovely the view is over Albano !" " Here is 
Mrs. D — and her three daughters and Count E — coming 
behind us." " Think of the Christian martyrs who 
perished in that arena below ! " " Did you hear of the 
leap Miss H — took on the Campagna to-day?" "I 
hate those altars and that cross in the middle " " Are 
you going to Palazzo E — on Friday?" " When the 
Colosseum falls, then Rome shall fall ; and when Eome 
falls — " "It is time for us to be off: we've seen 
everything." " Meet me by moonlight alone." " Ha ! 
ha ! how many pauls must we give to the custodi ?" 

How valuable is such a reminiscence as this of one of 
the most imposing scenes which the past has bequeathed 
to us to combine in one the terrible and the beautiful ! 



170 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



On another occasion it happened to me, many years 
ago, to enter Eome for the first time at night ; and, 
taking advantage of the halt at the Porta Angelica for 
the examination of our passports, I left the carriage in 
which I had travelled from Civita Yecchia, and found 
my way through the colonnade of St. Peter's, expecting 
to catch merely a distant glance of the wondrous sight. 
Beyond my hopes I found myself in the midst of the 
stupendous Piazza, the vast steps leading up to Bra- 
mante's dome in front, the lovely colonnades with their 
circling arms stretching round me in the still solitude, 
and the two glorious fountains on either side of the 
giant obelisk casting up their floods under the stars. 
The grandeur and the beauty of the scene nearly over- 
came me. It was too much for one to whom all the 
glories of Italy were new. I felt inclined rather to 
kneel rather than stand, oppressed with awe and admi- 
ration. Suddenly I heard behind me a voice in brilliant 
metallic French — 

" Tiens ! mais c'est joli 9a !" 

It was a young Greek lady travelling in the same 
vettura, who had followed me unperceived, and who 
now gave vent to her sense of the sublime and beautiful 
in that appropriate exclamation. After hearing St. 
Peter! s by starlight called "joli," was there anything 
more to be felt on the subject? 

The principle may sound inhuman and anti- social, 
but it is in reality wholly the reverse : " Secure soli- 
tude for yourself when you are going to behold any- 
thing peculiarly grand or affecting/ ' Only in solitude 
have we a chance of being carried away thoroughly out 



THE CITY OF PEACE. 



171 



of ourselves and our temporary concerns by the influ- 
ence of the place. Living human interests, or even the 
possibility of having them at any moment called out, 
will destroy half nature's power to awe, or that of art 
to charm. Where there are many present, also, there 
is an inevitable tendency to direct attention to details 
of the scene which each, as he remarks them, is led to 
share with his neighbour : thus, again, we are cheated 
of , those sublimer impressions which come from permit- 
ting our minor intellectual observant faculties to be 
dormant, while our souls lie open calmly and patiently 
to the influences of the mighty whole before us. Let us, 
then, leave even the most sympathizing of friends at 
the threshold of the temples of either nature or art, and 
enter, not with quick interchange of word and glance, 
and hasty interjections of admiration or disappointment, 
but silent and calm, and, altogether, alone. Better give 
up seeing any great object of interest than not see it 
thus aright. Why spoil for evermore our share in the 
joy which every such place is qualified to bring? There 
are not too many masterpieces of art, there are even not 
too many of the highest displays of nature's grandeur, 
to allow us to waste our first sight of any of them. Yet 
there are many persons who seem impatient till they 
have run over the whole earth in a few months of hasty 
travel, desecrating every sublimest memory with com- 
monplace associations and pitiful little jests, till they 
have attained that supreme climax of felicity, leaving 
no chance of admiring anything any more on this side 
eternity. 

Once it happened to me to climb up the Montanvert 



172 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



with a large company of clever and pleasant people. 
When we reached the summit, all, save myself and 
another lady, went down on the Mer de Glace. For us 
two the sight before us was enough for the time — the 
illimitable mass of Mont Blanc on one side, and on 
the other the Aigles, towering up across the glacier, 
high, high beyond the flight of the lark, into the blue 
heaven overhead. We were friends, that lady and I, 
not in common parlance only, but in every sympathy of 
our hearts ; and yet we parted instinctively when left 
alone upon that mountain-ridge, and only met an hour 
later to ask one another how we had spent the interval. 
" I sat down among the Alpine roses and cried" said 
my friend. "And I confess I did the same/' said I. 
Could either of us have known the overwhelming might 
of that scene which had thus crushed us down into the 
weakness of children had we remained with our friends, 
or even sat together side by side in fullest sympathy ? 
It is not to make little of human feeling to admit that 
it could not be |so. It is rather to acknowledge that, 
even when Mature puts forth her utmost power, the 
claims of humanity, if proffered to us, must be para- 
mount. 

Thus it happens, I imagine, that those in whom the 
love of nature is most intense have always in them 
something of the hermit — a propensity to make soli- 
tude, and not society, the substratum of life — however 
keenly they may relish the intervals of social pleasures. 
Such men may have their joys shared with their friends, 
but they desire always to suffer alone, to grieve alone, 
to pray alone. Do not bid such a man pour out his 



THE CITY OP PEACE. 



173 



sorrows to his fellows : bid him wander away far off 
into the fields and roads, by the shore of the sea, or, 
farther yet, into distant lands, alone. The burden laid 
on him will fall away, and his cares will drop one by 
one as he goes ; and at last, when they are all lightened, 
he will turn back and gather flowers on his homeward 
path till his hands are full of sweet and lovely things. 

It was some vague sense of these truths, as yet but 
half experienced, which led me to undertake alone a 
journey, somewhat adventurous for a woman, through 
Egypt and Syria. Even when kind invitations to join 
parties of English or Americans had lured me for a time 
into more social pilgrimage, 1 always managed to reserve 
the more interesting part of my excursions for solitude. 
Thus it happened that I was alone in some walks in 
Palestine, whose recollection is among the richest things 
in the memories of life, and whose pleasure I would 
fain desire to share with others by urging my country- 
women to leave the well-known paths of Erance and 
Switzerland and Italy for a season, and give themselves 
the delight of beholding the spots of earth round which 
imagination has hovered from childhood. It is not 
really difficult or seriously unsafe even for a lady alone, 
and the amount of fatigue and risk is more than recom- 
pensed. 

It would seem as if it were one of the special tasks 
of our day to bring out the heroes and saints of old from 
the somewhat dark and dusty niches and shrines where 
they have long stood far away from us, objects of vague 
and distant veneration, and restore them to the light of 
the common sun, so that we may look upon their faces 



174 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



and see that they also were men of like passions with 
us— and good and great, because they were men. 
Hitherto, in especial between us and the prophets and 
apostles of the Bible, there has intervened both a natural 
and a fictitious distance : there has been the natural and 
inevitable distance of both place and time — a place 
removed from us by thousands of miles and entire dif- 
ference of climate and habits of life and modes of ex- 
pression ; and a time composed of so many centuries, 
that we continually lose our consciousness of the per- 
spective of the earlier ages, and forget that fifty, or a 
hundred, or two or three hundred years were as long 
then as now, and left as wide scope for the growth of 
myth and legend, as similar intervals since the time of 
Shakespeare to our own. And besides these natural causes 
of illusive distance, there have been others at work, 
removing the best and greatest of our race out of the 
reach of our sympathies, taking from them their true 
human nature, and consequently taking from human 
nature the glory their goodness reflected upon it. Even 
as children and clowns can hardly be made to believe 
that kings and emperors have the limbs and stature of 
common men, and always enshroud them in a vague 
halo of fancy, so we have come to think of those on 
whose, heads was set the crown of divinest gifts, as if 
they had not our passions and our limitations. Infinite 
have been the mistakes, and woeful the mischief, which 
have arisen from this source both as regarding the men 
themselves and the books they have bequeathed to us ; 
and few labours will tend more to hasten the progress 
of religious thought than the removal of such miscon- 



THE CITY OF PEACE. 



175 



ceptions. Among the best means by which this maybe 
accomplished is the nuUifying of the perspective of 
Space by familiarizing to ourselves the actual scenes of 
the Bible story, while we strive to neutralize that of 
Time by critical collation of all attainable histories. 
How much this familiarity with sacred localities will 
effect towards bringing closer to us the great souls who 
once inhabited them, may be seen by comparing books 
like those of Stanley with the sacred biographies common 
in the beginning of this century. 

To a certain degree every individual can for himself 
narrow the distance between him and the great souls of 
the past by visiting the land where they dwelt, and so 
cutting off, at least, that perspective of place which adds 
not a little to the effect of the perspective of time. 
Walking where they walked, living in the same kind of 
houses, with the same sort of flowers and trees and 
animals around us, the same food and wine, the same 
soft sky overhead by day, and southern stars at night, 
the same names of hill, and grove, and fountain echoing 
in our ears, and around us the same, or a cognate race 
of men wearing the same attire, living the same simple 
life, and using the same metaphorical Eastern forms of 
expression — all these things, which have been so hap- 
pily made possible for us by the stereotyped civilization 
of Syria, tend immeasurably to bridge over the gulf of 
ages, and allow us to realize the characters and feelings 
of the prophets and apostles as we could never have 
done at home. Afany things which seemed cloudy 
become clear and simple ; and, on the other hand, many 
things which we imagined we could believe well enough 



176 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



while at a distance, become not merely incredible, but 
incogitable when recalled for judgment on their proper 
localities. 

In the following pages I shall endeavour to give a 
brief account of what a woman may easily see and do 
alone in Palestine, and thus, I trust, encourage my 
countrywomen to undertake the journey more frequently 
in future, whether with or without companions. Espe- 
cially does it seem desirable that women should seek by 
these and all other modes of study to fit themselves for 
their proper part in sharing the progress of human 
thought in our age. Too often have their limited lives, 
their scope of vision — narrowed artificially by educa- 
tion, as well as naturally by circumstances and the 
timid conservatism which seems a part of the female 
temperament — too often have all these causes made 
women the champions of antiquated prejudices, the cruel 
enemies of every newly -born truth. But the task to 
which they are called is the very opposite of all this. 
Women ought to be the torch-bearers in the pageant of 
humanity, lighting men onward in their noble pursuit 
of truth. Hitherto they have represented only the 
principles of spiritual carefulness, of a timidity in reli- 
gious things which wears the garb of faith, but is, in 
truth, full of injurious doubts and fears. Hereafter 
they 'must become the representatives of healthful aspi- 
ration, of the largest and widest human sympathies, 
and of faith in its real sense — faith, not in the lessons 
of the nursery and the schoolroom, but in those eternal 
verities of the Divine existence, and love, and righteous- 
ness towards which every lesser truth is a path to lead 



THE CITY OF PEACE* 



177 



us up. The night is past when it might have been 
permitted to close our doors and sit cowering over the 
light of our tapers. It is a pitiful thing to see women 
rising up now in the dawning day only to draw down 
the blinds and shut the casement whenever they hear 
any one cry, " Behold the morning !" 

Of my journey to Jerusalem and Hebron I shall not 
now speak, as it was performed in company with some 
ladies and gentlemen, who kindly invited me to join 
their caravan. The solitary part of my excursion con- 
sisted in my rambles about Jerusalem and its neigh- 
bourhood, and subsequent return to Jaffa. The latter 
short journey, happening at a period of unusual dis- 
turbance, may be taken as proof how easy is the whole 
"pilgrimage" in ordinary times to any lady, since, even 
at such a time when the armies of Aboo Goosh and his 
enemies were ravaging the district, I passed through it 
quite unmolested. 

It was a strange feeling to waken in Jerusalem. The 
quaint room in which I had slept opened out on a large, 
deep pool: that was the Pool of Hezekiah ! It was 
truly Jerusalem. I was actually there, at the bourn of 
all pilgrimage, the most sacred spot of all the earth ! I 
had awakened, after the long, heavy sleep of great fatigue, 
and pain from a sprained ankle ; and as I tried to 
gather up my thoughts, it seemed as if the idea were 
enough for a day's full delight — " This is Jerusalem !" 
By-and-by, a Jewish physician — Dr. Prankel — to whom 
I had brought letters of introduction, came to see me, 
and with extreme skill so treated my ankle as to remove 
all pain, and fit me for walking in a few days. But I 

N 



178 



THE CITIES OP THE PAST. 



could not wait, as the day went by, without seeing 
somewhat of the wonderful view which I knew must 
be opened from the roof of the house, over which I had 
passed to my room at night. I called the pleasant little 
German Jewess landlady, and with her aid went up a 
few steps, and then sat down. It was a picture indeed. 
Beneath us lay nearly the whole of Jerusalem — a mass 
of small, dome-roofed houses, with here and there a mina- 
ret rising out of them, and at one side a large space filled 
with ruins, a palm-tree or two, and a few cypresses. 
Over and beyond the city, and occupying nearly the 
entire background, was a lofty rounded hill, brown and 
bare, save for the pale olive-trees scattered over it, so 
sparsely they might almost have been counted as we 
stood. 

" That is the Mount of Olives ?" I said. 

"Yes; and that is the Chapel of the Ascension on 
the top. You cannot see Gethsemane ; it is hidden in 
the valley." 

To the left of the Mount of Olives were some softer 
hills ; to the right, in the far distance, the grand chain 
of the mountains of Moab, forming a heaven-high wall 
as far as the eye could see, far off, over the Dead Sea 
plains. 

In- front, between us and the Mount of Olives, and on 
the Hill of Zion, within the walls of Jerusalem, stretched 
a vast enclosure, with rich green grass, and cypresses, 
and white tombs of sheiks ; in the centre, a grand 
octagon building, surmounted by a lofty dome. 

" That is the Mosque of Omar ! " 

I know not of what creed could be the man whose 



THE CITY OF PEACE. 



179 



eyes could rest with, indifference on this spot, where, 
for nearly forty centuries, the prayers of men had 
ascended to the One Father of All. In the other ancient 
temples of the world we are forced to feel that a cloud 
lay ever over the worshippers, and the One was dimly 
beheld behind the Many who usurped his rightful 
place ; but here, at least, with all the imperfections and 
limitations of their creeds, the Moslem, and the Jew, 
and the Chaldean Patriarch had knelt to One alone — to 
Allah, Jehovah, the "Most High God." To Him only 
went up the adoring prayers of that mighty Caliph and 
his warriors, before whom the earth shook, and the idols 
fell at the shout of new-born Islam, " La Allah Illah 
Allah ! " Before him had worshipped, in the second 
temple, the Christ, who taught us to call Him Our 
Father ; before him had ascended the psalms of kings 
and prophets in the magnificent ritual of the First 
Temple, when the vast walls echoed back the trium- 
phant chant, " Lift up your heads, oh, ye gates, and be 
ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, that the King of 
Glory may come in ! " Before him, in the Holy Place of 
I the Tabernacle, had David poured forth the suppliant 
prayers of penitence, which even now are the words 
our hearts sob out in their innermost depths; before 
him, in the dawn of history, had Melchisedek, the 
" King of Righteousness," ministered on that Hill of 
Salem, the "Priest of the Most High God." As I 
I gazed on the sacred spot, the words forced themselves 
j almost to my lips, " Mosque of Omar, Temple of Ue- 
hemiah, of Solomon, and of Melchisedek ! Monotheist 
Temple of three thousand years ! When the last fane 

bt 2 



180 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



rises on thy ruins to crown the Hill of Zion, the truth 
to which thou hast witnessed so long shall be the faith 
of the world; the errors which have narrowed thy 
courts, and undermined thy towers, shall have fled to 
the realm of shadows for ever." 

Surely it is true what the most enlightened living 
teacher of Judaism has avowed, that the office of his 
nation in the world's history has been to hold fast, as in 
the citadel of the human race, the great truth of the 
unity of God, and that, when all mankind shall have at 
last received it into their hearts, then, and not till then, 
shall the Mosaic law cease to bind together the chosen 
race, and the Jew merge at last with the Christian in 
the flood of the nations.*' The forecasting of such a 
glorious end must have been in the nobler minds of the 
Rabbins since the time of the Talmud, when, in the very 
midst of their persecutions, they were able to lay down 
the splendid principle (how far in advance of the teach- 
ing of many Christians in our day!), "He is admitted 
to all the spiritual privileges of a Jew who, without 
partaking of Jewish rites, can repeat from his heart the 
confession, ' Hear, oh, Israel ! the Lord your God is 
One Lord.' " 

Slowly my eyes turned away from the Mosque of 
Omar 3 and wandered over the city below me. Suddenly, 
I noted on the left hand, hardly a hundred yards from 
the spot where I was seated, a large church, with rich 
Gothic windows and lofty eastern dome. There could 
be but one such in Jerusalem. 

^ See Philippsolin's Development of the Religious Idea. 



THE CITY OF PEACE. 



181 



"The Holy Sepulchre ?" 
" Yes, the Holy Sepulchre. " 

So near ! I might have noted all the awful scenes of 
•which its walls enshrined the memorial ; I might have 
heard the last words wherewith ended the life of Christ ; 
and His eyes must have closed on that same view before 
me — that barren Mount of Olives, that lofty chain of 
Moab, that ineffably soft spring sky of Palestine ! 

It was enough, more than enough, for that day. I 
went back to my room, and did not leave it again till I 
had recovered. 

It is always a bootless controversy that concerning 
the veritable locality of great events. The end of nearly 
all such researches is to prove that our natural longing to 
be satisfied on the matter can never be fulfilled. Small 
moment is it that it should be so, since we can scarcely 
return, after the lapse of only ten or twenty years, to 
any scene of our own youthful accidents or exploits 
without finding ourselves bewildered between the tricks 
of memory and the actual facts of the spot before us. 
How rarely does it happen that we have not pictured 
the lawn twice as large, the tree standing in a different 
place, the ravine deeper and wider than the truth ? Yet 
we go on treating all such betrayals of memory as curious 
individual failures — exceptional cases, such as, of course, 
cannot be looked for in the history of great events. But 
the greater and more exciting the event, the more it 
has been thought of, and talked over, and described, the 
more certain it is to undergo the process of alteration 
and exaggeration. A learned lawyer once informed me 
that he had occasion to study the records of a trial which 



182 



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by some legal contingency had been gone over three 
times, at intervals of a year. The evidences of the wit- 
nesses, all on oath, and all of unimpeached probity, 
varied so far in each of the three trials in the way of 
exaggeration, that it was almost impossible to harmonize, 
on any hypothesis, their last depositions with the first ; 
and, what was most remarkable, was the fact that each 
successive evidence of each witness grew more and more 
accurate and decided in proportion as it receded from 
the original recollection. The controversy about the 
site of the Holy Sepulchre is briefly this : — Golgotha 
was outside the walls of ancient Jerusalem ; the church 
supposed to be raised over it is considerably within the 
walls of modern Jerusalem. If it be the true site, the 
line of walls must have been greatly changed. But this 
is not probable, seeing that the Pool of Hezekiah was 
inside the walls in ancient times, and is inside them 
still ; and this pool being close outside the Holy Sepul- 
chre, can hardly have been included in any circuit 
which should exclude the church. To all this it is an- 
swered that there was certainly a Temple of Venus, 
erected on the site originally honoured by Christians, 
and that the position of this temple must have been 
easily discoverable by Constantine, possessed as he was 
of the' perfect surveys of the Soman government. Nay, 
he could not avoid seeing such evidence of the true site, 
without public scandal. The removal of the rubbish of 
the temple, the discovery of the sepulchre below, were 
events celebrated with great ostentation, and must have 
called attention to the imposture, if the documents in 
the Eoman archives had been neglected, and the spot 



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183 



arbitrarily selected to display an imaginary discovery.** 
1 know not whether this argument — drawn from what the 
other side would have said, if wonders were fictitious — be 
very satisfactory. We do not often find it recorded in 
ancient story what " the other side" did say, when that 
other side was in the minority. If a Porphyry or a 
Celsus chanced to record his dissent in writing, was the 
writing very carefully preserved by the Church for our 
instruction, or committed to the flames ? 

The first Sunday after my arrival, the party with 
whom I had travelled up from Jaffa betook themselves to 
Bishop Gobat's church; and, with the aid of a strong 
stick of olive-wood from the Mount of Olives, I managed 
to find my way by myself to the Holy Sepulchre. By 
a happy chance, it was a quiet time, the pilgrims 
having been drawn off to some ceremony elsewhere, 
and I was able to take in its impression as I would 
never have done on the other days I visited it, when it 
was crowded with wild, excited men and women of all 
nations, chattering many tongues, and pressing violently 
through every door to fulfil their allotted " stations." 
This day it was all silent and still. Passing in through 
the beautiful Gothic door, from the glaring sunshine 
and noisy market-place outside, the coolness, and calm, 
and darkness sent a feeling of solemn peace to one's 
heart. There is a sort of inner porch or hall, where the 
Moslem guard is placed, and then I entered the great 
circular temple beneath the dome. To my feelings this 
church is a very beautiful one ; the lofty rounded arches 

* Greece under the Romans, Appendix III. 



184 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



which surround it, and which lead off into endless 
churches and altars and corridors ; the rich and quaint 
decorations, on which the light from the dome falls 
softened through a vast veil stretched horizontally over 
the tomb ; and, lastly, in the centre, the little marble 
building, yellow with age, and seeming like a temple in 
miniature, the Holy Sepulchre itself, — all this consti- 
tutes a scene equally novel and impressive. There are 
two chambers in this inner shrine, the first entered 
through a "low, small gate" — no unfit emblem of 
prayer — and within, another smaller still, having room 
only for the plain white marble altar-tomb, without 
sculpture or inscription, and place to kneel beside it. A 
monk was there, when I entered, at his devotions. He 
rose silently, and went out, leaving me alone. 

It would be needless to attempt any accurate de- 
scription of this church ; its intricate plan requires to 
be studied with diagrams, for there are chambers every- 
where, above and below, and at least five considerable 
churches open into it — the Greek (which is very large 
and splendid), the Latin, Copt, Maronite, and Eestorian. 
I could not but think how true a picture did the whole 
afford of the religions of the world, each opening into the 
true sanctuary of Divine Love, yet none being per- 
mitted to monopolize to itself that Holy of Holies. 

Ascending some stairs out of one of the corridors, I 
reached the traditional site of Calvary. There is a 
double chapel here, or rather two small vaulted 
chambers parallel to one another. In one of them there 
is a golden ring in the floor, round the hole where the 
cross is supposed to have stood, and over it a very 



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185 



frightful and discordant object, a painted figure cut out 
in card-board to represent the crucifixion. The literal 
observance of the Second Commandment by the Greeks 
has driven them to this miserable compromise between 
a picture and a statue. On a second visit I paid to 
this chamber, I remained a long time, seated quietly, 
watching the pilgrims, who performed their appointed 
"stations" at the different points marked out by the 
established order. It was a singular sight. I did not 
once trace anything resembling that awe which such a 
scene might naturally be supposed to produce in those 
whose whole religion might be said to have been 
centred there, who had no shadow of doubt as to 
whether they were on the actual site of the great 
mysterious event. They hurried through their genu- 
flexions, scarcely looking around, save to identify the 
proper spot for each prayer, and went in and out with 
that rapid, excited manner and gabbling recitation, 
which so entirely distinguish, through the East, the 
prayers of Christians from those of the reverent and 
solemn Moslems. There seems to be something in the 
worship of a multiplicity of Divine Beings, Yirgins, and 
Saints which effectually debars the mind from that awe 
and reverence which in any case is not a common attri- 
bute of humanity. The rule is almost without excep- 
tion — the more objects of worship, the less reverent is 
the worship. Instead of being more impressed (as 
theoretically the Catholic or the Greek is assumed to 
be) by the celestial hierarchy of interceding saints 
through whom his prayers are to ascend to the highest 
Heaven, he is affected quite the other way : his whole 



186 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



faculty of veneration is diffused, absorbed, and often 
well-nigh lost altogether. No Protestant nation ever 
uses the Divine name with the irreverence of the 
Catholic; and the Moslem creed, with its vast moral 
inferiority to Christianity, by this great doctrine of the 
Divine unity, has maintained among its disciples a 
feeling of solemnity unknown to all the churches around 
them. It were enough to compare the worship in the 
Mosque of Hassan at Cairo, for instance, with that in the 
Coptic Church in the same city, where, in the most holy 
adytum (forbidden to female feet) I saw the boys of the 
choir struggling with the young priest for a certain 
sacred cake, and leaping, laughing, and romping round 
the altar. The truth appears to be that awe is by no 
means a sentiment of easy growth in the minds of the 
uneducated. We are always inclined to imagine that 
by descending to the lower strata of society we shall 
find the ignorant, poor, and stupid ready to pay pro- 
found reverence first to their teachers and benefactors, 
and then to whomsoever above we may please to direct 
their religious sentiments ; this is a delusion, however, 
which a very little experience either among half- 
civilized nations, or among our own " city Arabs," 
would soon dissipate. Wonder — not Awe — is the senti- 
ment common to all uneducated minds. The gaze — half- 
curious, half-contemptuous, wherewith a herd of cows 
seems to regard a Maypole unaccountably erected in 
their field, is a very close parallel to that of the boys at 
a ragged school staring at the diagrams of a scientific 
lecturer, or a party of pilgrims following the guidance of 
a cicerone monk. Yeneration is the last and highest, 



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187 



rather than the first and commonest of human attri- 
butes. 

After some days I was enabled to start on a long, 
solitary walk. Descending from the roof of the hotel, 
I fonnd myself in Patriarch Street, on my way to the 
Jaffa Gate. But who shall describe to European imagi- 
nations a street in Jerusalem ? Yery narrow are they 
all, very dark, and with blind walls on either side, and 
flying arches to prevent one house falling against 
another. The pavement would make one remember the 
hideous idea of the grim old Calvinist, that ' ' Hell is 
paved with the skulls of infants not a span long." A 
series of skulls set side by side, with every here and 
there a large one missing, and a hole in its place : such 
is the pavement of Jerusalem. In the centre of each 
street there is a gutter filled with orange peel, dead 
rats, and all unimaginable rubbish. To make one's 
way through such defiles (in all senses of the word) is 
no light matter. There are throngs of passengers, — 
Arabs, Turks, Greeks, Jews, Persians, and nondescripts 
beyond number. When a donkey is driven up it is 
perilous, a horse is worse, a camel all but destruction ; 
the great beast walks grimly on, his ugly head seeming 
ready to bite everybody, the bales of goods on his back 
swaying from side to side so as almost to touch each 
wall of the street alternately. The hapless traveller 
hops aside, and tumbles against a venerable Kestorian, 
with a cap half a yard high, and leaving him in dismay, 
falls into a shop of holy soap, an article of which the 
sale in Jerusalem appears to be in the inverse ratio of 
the habitual use. Cries, curses, bargainings, in half a 



188 



THE CITIES OP THE PAST. 



dozen languages, are going on all around, and a good 
hearty quarrel every few yards. Such, alas ! is the 
outward guise of the " City of Peace." Further infor- 
mation tends to show that the discord lies still deeper 
than the din of the streets. The Jews form three 
parties, so grievously divided as to occupy, at the time 
of my visit, the whole attention of their venerable rabbi, 
Abul Ana, in persuading them to a joint celebration of 
the Passover. The Moslem sects of Sunnites and Shiites 
meet here, in one of their five holy cities, to special 
conflicts ; and every one of the least enlightened and 
most fanatical Christian Churches — Copts, Maronites, 
IsTestorians, Greeks, and Latins— contend with such 
bitter animosity, that a guard of Turks sits always 
smoking and playing in the anteroom of the Holy 
Sepulchre, to prevent their coming — as they have often 
done — to blows and bloodshed in the very sanctuary 
itself. As my Piedmontese dragoman, a very devout 
Eomanist, said to me, " Ah, signora, si chiama Gerusa- 
lemme la Citta della Pace, ma da vero e la citta della 
discordia." 

There seem to be three conditions of religious feeling 
traceable through history : the heathen stage of indif- 
ferentism, when belief concerning the gods was sup- 
posed to be of small importance in this world, and of no 
sort of weight in determining man's destiny hereafter ; 
next, the stage of the Jew and of the two great branches 
of Judaism — Christianity and Islam — wherein true be- 
lief in religious matters is supposed to be the sole pass- 
port to Divine favour here, and to escape from eternal 
perdition in another existence ; lastly, the stage to- 



THE CITY OP PEACE. 



1S9 



wards which mankind is only beginning in a far-off 
way to approach, the stage when a true faith shall 
neither be deemed a matter of indifference nor yet the 
sole passport to heaven, but a great Divine boon, shared 
by the best and wisest only imperfectly, the highest of 
all blessings, the most solemn of all responsibilities. 

The Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem, like all the gates of 
eastern cities, contains within the deep porch chambers 
and divans where guards, and loungers, and travellers all 
pause to converse. The " Gate" is in the East what 
the club is in the West, so far as public gossip is con- 
cerned. To speak with one's " adversaries in the gate" 
must have been equivalent to the holding up of one's 
head in the club-house or 'change of a man's native 
town. Yet in these gateways, at the appointed hour 
of prayer, when the muezzin's voice pealed from the 
minaret, the cry — " La Allah Illah Allah, Mahomet 
Eesoul Allah !" — I have often seen men spreading their 
carpets, and kneeling down, entirely regardless of the 
crowd around them, apparently altogether absorbed in 
their devotions. In this, as in so many other things, 
how wide is the difference between us and the nations 
of the south, nay, between us and all other nations ! 
An Englishman would not merely shrink with horror 
from the idea of kneeling down and saying his prayers 
in a public thoroughfare, but of doing almost anything 
except talk and smoke, where he can be looked at. 
Place an English lady or gentleman on a balcony or seat 
of a public garden by themselves. Can he or she eat, 
or read, or sit idle quite composedly and happily ? JSot 
once in twenty times, unless he or she have lived many 



190 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



a long year in freer lands, or chance to inherit some 
Celtic elements of character. The true English insulaire 
is more comfortable in the gloomiest little dining-room, 
with brown veils before the windows and area rails 
behind them, where he can be safe from the gaze of his 
fellow-creatures, than on the loveliest terrace in Europe, 
where somebody might chance to cast on him one of 
those inoffensive looks wherewith foreigners regard 
human beings in general. 

Passing out at the Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem, and keep- 
ing the old crenelated wall of the city always to the 
left, I passed first by the dry Pool of Gihon, still tra- 
versed by the great aqueduct built by Solomon, which 
to this day supplies the town with water drawn from 
his pools, fifteen miles away. Above Gihon, on the 
barren rocky hill, is the large estate lately purchased 
and walled in by Sir Moses Montefiore. It contains, 
among other charitably-designed constructions, a large 
windmill for the use of the poorer Jews of the city. 
Inside the town, as I afterwards learned, are large 
schools and an excellent dispensary, supported by this 
beneficent gentleman, whose name is a tower of strength 
to. his unfortunate countrymen. Having been favoured 
with some introductions from his family, the number of 
Jews who came to my hotel to inquire if I could give 
them any intelligence of their benefactor, was pleasing 
to witness. 

After passing the Pool of Gihon, the path winds down 
into the Valley of Hinnon, following the sweep of the 
walls above, past the Field of Aceldamar, into the 
Valley of Jehosophat, one valley crossing and leading 



THE CITY OF PEACE. 



191 



into another. It was less dreary than I expected. The 
bottom of each narrow gorge is planted with olive- 
trees and almond and apricot-trees, all in blossom at the 
time of my visit. Here also, as everywhere, the wild 
flowers spring in myriads out of the dry ground, and 
rarely can a flower be otherwise than a thing to gladden 
the eyes and soften any scene or chamber, however bare 
or homely. One flower, however, I did see plucked 
hereabouts by a friend, on the mount called the "Hill 
of Evil Counsel,' ' the most wicked-looking object ima- 
ginable, — large, creeping, black and yellow, with a sort 
of mouth and teeth, uncanny to contemplate ! I never 
saw anything so uncomfortable in nature, except a cer- 
tain frog, which once hopped over me as I sat on the 
banks of the JSTile, suggesting the idea that his ancestor 
must have been the production of the Frankenstein 
magicians of Pharaoh. 

Another sweep of the path, and the valley below 
opened out grandly over jSTehemiah's Tomb, to the far- 
off chain of the Mountains of Gilead and Moab ; and 
by-and-by I reached the Fountain of Siloam. It is a 
beautiful spot. Overhead the battlements of the walls 
of Jerusalem form the background ; then there is a large 
upper pool where yet remains much curious stone-work ; 
and below it another, whose central space is filled with 
verdant herbage and luxuriant fig-trees ; while further 
down, the water runs into a great stone cistern, and 
then flows off to moisten the green fields of lettuces and 
herbs which replace the ancient gardens of Solomon. 
Beside the cistern stood a group of Syrian women, wash- 
ing and drawing water, a bright and busy scene. Once 



192 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



another group had stood there, — a group of Galilean 
peasants, and one they called " Master" among them. 
This is one of the sites concerning which no doubt can 
exist; here fancy may have its sanction from history, 
and wonderful it is when we first stand and say to our- 
selves, " Christ stood in this very place." 

The Pool of Siloam, as all the world knows now, is an 
intermittent spring. In Jewish times it was believed 
that an " aDgel" stirred the waters. The Moslems 
think that a dragon lies hid under the hill ; w r hen he 
sleeps the waters stop, when he wakes they flow again. 
How clearly can we trace here the stages of the human 
mind ! Doubtless, at first, to the earliest reasonings of 
men, all things were miraculous ; an occult will ruled 
each phenomenon of nature, Auster or Boreas blew in 
every blast, a river-god poured every stream from his 
urn. Then came the next stage, when only the unusual 
and remarkable was miraculous, — a thunderstorm on 
Olympus or Sinai, the stony rain of Amalek, or this 
intermittent fount of Siloam. At last the usual and 
unusual, the ordinary course of nature and the most 
prodigious catastrophes, all take their place as the re- 
sults of the same great order — changeless because it is 
the order of Him who "hath no variableness nor shadow 
of turning." When shall we learn to read history by the 
light of this simple lesson ? and in the writings of men 
who lived near the first period expect to find every- 
where that "theocratic pragmatism" which attributes 
every event directly to Divine agency ? and in those of 
men who lived in the second period equally expect to 
find every unusual event and every extraordinary gift 



THE CITY OE PEACE. 



193 



of body or mind, attributed to the immediate interpo- 
sition or inspiration of Deity ? What an infinite weight 
of difficulties would be cleared away by the application 
of this very simple and obvious rule, " Judge men from 
their stand-point, not ours !" We should then perhaps 
hear the last of that thrice-stupid dilemma, "Either 
the wonder-workers of old, who averred that God em- 
powered them, were truly all they affirmed or else im- 
postors." 

In our day if men make such claims they are in- 
deed impostors — like Prince and Joseph Smith, though 
the line where enthusiasm merges into fanaticism, and 
fanaticism into conscious imposture, may be very hard 
for us to draw. But let any one read the chronicles 
of the days of Eede, or of Bernard, or of Clairvaux, 
and say whether men living in such an atmosphere of 
thought were necessarily either impostors or true histo- 
rians in narrating their miraculous stories ? Nay, it 
was surely the most devout and simple-hearted saint or 
hero who always attributed his achievements to divine 
aid. " God put those words in my mouth." — " God 
taught me to use that remedy." — " God strengthened 
my arm in the battle." — " Thus saith" (not I, but) "the 
Lord : Of what avail your sacrifices ? Do justice and 
love mercy." Were these assertions of divine assist- 
ance impostures ? Were they even false, judged by a 
philosophy which should include both primary and 
secondary causes ? Not half so false, surely, as the 
histories which ignore that behind all human virtue 
and genius and valour and insight, behind all the pheno- 
mena of the visible universe, whether the growth of 

o 



194 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



the herb or the convulsions of the earthquake, there is 
always a greater cause — there is always God. 

Beyond Siloam the " flowing/' opens out gradually 
the Valley of Jehoshaphat. The belief that in this place 
the great final assize of the universe shall be held, has 
caused the Jews for ages to make immense efforts to be 
here interred. A whole hill-side is paved with their 
small, low tombs — mere narrow slabs of stone, graven 
with Hebrew characters, and level with the ground — a 
charnel mountain, awful to behold or traverse, whereon 
the " Triumph of Death" might fitly be written. 

'Near the dry and stony channel of Kedron, low down 
in the valley, stand the rock tombs of Zechariah, Absa- 
lom, and St. James. They are nearly perfect monoliths, 
cut out of the solid rock, which is hewn away behind 
them so as to make them stand out each like a huge 
intaglio rehvato, from the face of the cliff. Their age 
is believed to be about that of the Christian era, the 
Ionic columns having manifestly no claim to the anti- 
quity of Absalom and Zechariah. The good and clever 
Piedmontese, Abengo, whom I afterwards employed as 
dragoman, suggested to me the ingenious idea that the 
Pharisees were Yery probably engaged in the erection of 
this very tomb to the memory of Zechariah when Christ 
rebuked them: " Ye build the sepulchres of the pro- 
phets," &c. 

Every reader must be familiar with the form of these 
sepulchres — the pyramid surmounting that of Zechariah, 
and the cone that of Absalom. I sat down opposite 
them to place some little memorial of them in my sketch- 
book,, but it was not easy to do so. As I looked at them 



THE CITY OF PEACE. 



195 



my eyes filled often, for there came up before me, instead 
of the desolate Yalley of Jehoshaphat and the lonely 
tombs and arid bed of Kedron, the beautiful prints in 
the old folio of Calmet's Dictionary, pored over on 
many a happy Sunday of childhood by the side of the 
parents who, even in that dear home three thousand 
miles away, I should never find again. Let us at least 
bless God, if we have had happy Sundays of childhood ! 
They are good to look back upon from beside the graves 
wherewith the world is full for us in later life. Let us 
bless God above all earthly blessings, if in those Sundays 
of childhood a mother's soft arms were around us, and 
her sweet voice guided our lips to say, " Our Father, 
which art in heaven." We may for evermore bear 
through the lonely paths of our earthly way the memory 
that we were loved once with all the fulness of a 
mother's love ; and with that memory also shall we 
keep the faith that there must be somewhere in this 
great dim universe a Sun of love, infinite and eternal, 
whose reflected ray, shining on us long ago through our 
mother's eyes, has been enough to lighten all our night. 

The bourne of my walk was near. A shapeless high 
wall, dressed roughly with mortar, and inclosing about 
a rood of ground, wherein is a sort of old English garden, 
with formal beds of stocks and roses ; and among them, 
as apple trees or pears might grow with us, seven or 
eight very aged and failing olive-trees. This is Geth- 
semane. 

The monk who usually guards the garden was absent, 
and the trellised door locked ; not a living creature was 
in sight. I rather rejoiced that so it should be ; and 

o 2 



196 



THE CITIES 0E THE PAST. 



willingly deferring the entry into the garden till another 
day, I climbed the hill above, to the ruined oil-press 
which commands the whole spot, and on the opposite 
hill, the walls of Jerusalem, crowned by the Mosque of 
Omar. The court of the little building was overgrown 
with terebinths or ilexes, I know not which, and the 
ground was covered with the beautiful deep-red ane- 
mones which are called the " Tears of Christ." It was 
very wonderful to sit^there quite alone, and I know not 
how the time went by. The solitude was so complete, it 
was hard to believe that within those walls, not many 
hundred yards away, lay a city of living men. 

Gethsemane seems to be to most minds the holiest 
spot on all the earth — far more so than Bethlehem, 
more so than Calvary itself. The reason is, perhaps, 
not far to seek. The story of the Agony is one that 
belongs to the life, not of Christ alone, but of all the 
millions of souls who have passed into His Father's 
kingdom. All men have not their Calvary — it pleases 
God to [make the bitter cup [pass from many lips ere 
they drink it to the dregs ; but all deep and true lives 
have a Gethsemane — a time when a man must decide to 
do the right, even when all hope of happiness, all use- 
fulness for his brothers — nay, perhaps, all faith in his 
work in the world, seems sacrificed thereby. 

In the Krito there is a story affording one of the 
many strange parallels — half similarity, half contrast — 
between the life of the sage of Athens and the great 
Prophet of Nazareth. To Socrates, as to Christ, it 
would seem that death was a free choice. Krito, the 
loving disciple, is represented as entering before dawn 



THE CITY 0E PEACE. 



197 



the prison where the Master lay sleeping, and calmly 
smiling in his sleep at his own dream of the celestial 
form descending to promise him that " in three days he 
shonld be in the fertile Phthia." Krito implores his 
Master to escape while it was yet time from the ini- 
quitous sentence which that day should see executed. 
The jailers are bribed, the doors are open ; he has but 
to walk forth and embark, followed by his children and 
his friends, and live evermore safe and honoured in 
beautiful Thessaly. Calmly and smilingly, yet most 
peremptorily, the Master answered, u ]STo !" The struggle 
of his soul — if struggle there had been — was unbeheld 
and unsuspected by mortal eyes, over long ago, perhaps 
in the days of the Tyrants or the Plague. ~We do not 
see, we do not even imagine, in Socrates, the yet quiver- 
ing virtue, achieving, with tears of blood, its hard- 
fought victory. He is only revealed to us as the grand 
and calm old hero-sage, who can afford to smile as he 
strokes the limbs scarred by the fetters, and caresses 
the beautiful long locks of Agathos, which he knows 
will be soon shorn in mourning for his memory. We 
admire, we revere, in a certain sense we love him ; but 
not the " divine Plato' s" pen could make the prison of 
Socrates what the simple Matthew has made Gethse- 
mane to the human heart for ever. He has made us 
witnesses to that mortal struggle which appeals to the 
deepest sympathies of our struggling souls. 

There is a subterranean grotto a little way from the 
Garden of Gethsemane, which tradition has called the 
" scene of the visit of the angel." Beyond this is the 
tomb of the Virgin, whose wall is faced with Gothic 



198 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



arches of the Crusaders' times. Neither on the occasion 
of this walk, nor of a subsequent visit, was there any 
one near the tomb, nor any means of entering it. Con- 
sidering the thousands of pilgrims of the Greek and 
Latin Churches who were at the time thronging Jeru- 
salem and the road to Jordan, and remembering the rank 
which the Madonna or Panagia holds in their creeds, 
such omission of all honour to her grave seemed not a 
little singular. The site is not more or less questionable 
than most of the others to which they pay devotions. 

The path from Gethsemane and the Yirgin's tomb 
leads up the hill to the Gate of Jerusalem called that of 
St. Stephen. Half way up, a few hundred yards from 
the walls, it crosses another path, and here is the scene 
of the martyrdom. It has sometimes appeared to me 
that the horror of such a mode of death as stoning, and 
the sublimity of virtue which could endure it in the 
spirit of St. Stephen, has been hardly sufficiently recog- 
nised. That brief passage in many a sanguinary page 
of Jewish story — " They stoned him with stones and he 
died/' — what does it mean? It must be hard enough 
for a condemned criminal to stand waiting for speedy 
execution, and to see beside him, calm and unmoved, 
the headsman or hangman, who in another moment will 
take his life ; but what must it be to a man to see 
glaring around, in his death agony, twenty or fifty 
executioners, each eagerly casting at him the rude, 
cruel missiles, which fall, crushing and tearing his 
defenceless limbs till his frame is only one mangled 
mass of flesh and gore, and one stone more blinds him 
to those eyes of hate, and another deafens him to those 



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199 



yelling voices, and he lies prostrate in the dust, struck 
yet and yet again, till nought of humanity remains, 
only a pile of blood-stained stones, and a red stream 
trickling slowly from beneath them ! This was the 
death of Stephen. And as he bore it he prayed — " Lord, 
lay not this sin to their charge !" Small marvel was it 
if he who stood near — guarding the murderers' gar- 
ments, and watching that scene in which the new faith 
found so sublime, so complete a revelation — should have 
borne away thence thoughts and feelings which blazed 
out ere long on the road to Damascus, and made of 
Saul the Persecutor, Paul the Apostle of the Nations. 
Standing over the glorious hills and waters of Smyrna, 
or in our own sordid English Smithfield, or amid the 
soft laurels and flowers of the garden at Geneva, I have 
thought how Polycarp and Latimer had fought for all 
their race a nobler fight than Marathon or Thermopylae. 
But standing beside the place of Stephen's martyrdom, 
it seemed as if here, before me, on this very spot of 
dusty ground for a scaffold, and with the huge rough 
stones lying all around for instruments, the faith of 
Christendom had been won — " The blood of the martyrs 
was the seed of the Church." But Stephen first taught 
men how that seed might be sown. 

Re-entering within the walls of Jerusalem, through 
St. Stephen's Grate, I tried to identify, among the heaps 
of ruined buildings around, the house called that of 
Pilate, and the " Ecce Homo" arch. By-and-by, 
pursuing my way, led on from one object to another, I 
found myself entangled in a labyrinth of gloomy and 



200 



THE CITIES 0E THE PAST. 



filthy streets, thronged with men and women of twenty- 
different nations, among whom the perpetual jarring 
and squabbling of Jerusalem were going forward. No 
one molested me ; but it became eventually rather 
fatiguing to wander on and on, or round and round, for 
all I could tell, in nightmare-fashion, without an idea 
as to the direction I was taking. Among all the 
languages spoken around me, there was not one of which 
I knew enough to ask my way, and after my long walk 
I was growing weary in brain and limbs. Suddenly, 
among the jostling crowd, I observed a man in half- 
European dress, with those good, pleasant, albeit 
homely features one learns to associate with the German 
race. To him accordingly I made the best of my way, 
and having uttered the shibboleth, "Ich bitte," was 
delighted to find myself understood, and my feet soon 
guided in the direction of the " European hotel, com- 
manding a view of the Mount of Olives, ' 7 as it is inva- 
riably advertised. How queer and startling, and some- 
what shocking, are all the associations of such places, 
Mr. Trollope has very admirably described. Having 
had the pleasure of sharing with him the table- d' hot e, 
and many a good laugh at the scenes there enacted, I 
can witness how true to life are the ridiculous cross- 
purposes,in the Bertrams, wherein are jumbled together, 
in the running fire of common table-talk, all the most 
solemn names in the world, and the most trivial details 
of each day's excursion. The Yia Dolorosa— and 
troubles with donkey-boys, the Yalley of Jehoshaphat 
— and the necessity for parasols, the cave of Jeremiah's 
lamentations — and the nuisance of backsheesh : all these, 



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201 



and many more sacred names, are inevitably mixed up 
in the animated talk, of the American and English tra- 
vellers ; while, amidst biblical and theological disqui- 
sitions, rises over all continually the wail of hungry and 
dissatisfied pilgrims over the muddy wine of Eethlehem 
and the atrocious olive-oil of Palestine, wherewith every 
dish is drenched and rendered disgusting. Life is a 
continual jostling of the sublime and the ridiculous ; 
but never do they rub much more closely together than 
at Christian Hauser's table- cP hote in Jerusalem. 

Of my remaining walks about Jerusalem little need 
be said. My kind Jewish physician, at my request, 
agreed to conduct me, and a clergyman at the hotel, 
who was anxious to share the adventure, into the pre- 
cincts of the Mosque of Omar. It was rather a dan- 
gerous attempt ; for at that moment the Moslem popu- 
lation were in an unusually excited state, and ingress 
to any part of the building was strictly forbidden to 
both Jews and Christians. We managed, however, to 
glide unseen through the outer gate, cross an angle of 
the vast inclosure, formerly the Court of the Gentiles, 
and climb up to the roof of a house on the opposite side, 

where Dr. E had friends, and where we could 

obtain a very fair view of the whole site of the ancient 
Temple. The green inclosure of the Court of the 
Gentiles was pleasant to the eye. "White tombs of 
departed sheiks alternate with lofty cypresses, and 
through the whole space devotees were kneeling in all 
the varied costumes of the East. To the two great 
sects of Moslems, as to Christians, Jerusalem is a holy 
city — one of the four places of pilgrimage whose visita- 



202 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



tion is supposed to conduce to salvation, as well as in 
this world to the acquirement of the honourable title 
of " hajji " (pilgrim). It is, therefore, the most de- 
vout — perhaps we might say fanatical — of the disciples 
of Islam who are gathered here from all their countries. 
For the mosque itself — a vast circular, or rather polo- 
gonal, building, surmounted by a great dome, and 
standing in the inclosure over the site of the "Holy of 
Holies " — much question might, I supposed, be raised 
as to any claim to architectural merit. The prevailing 
green colour of the whole affects the eye strangely and 
not imposingly. To me, individually, the mosque 
seemed on the whole pleasing, and in fine proportion of 
dome and basement; but not grand or in any way 
sublime, as its vast dimensions might have warranted 
the anticipation. As we descended from our gazebo on 
the roof, where we had been peeping through the open 
bricks of the parapet, some of the pilgrims in the inclo- 
sure caught sight of us, and set up a hue and cry. In a 
moment a mob were after us, throwing stones in a 
fashion which, having already experienced at Emmaus 
(receiving a sharp blow on the elbow), I was not 
anxious to enjoy a second time. Out of the gate, and 
down two or three sharp turns, our guide led us quickly, 
and we were lucky enough to dodge our pursuers. 

Since writing the above, I have been informed by an 
officer who accompanied the Prince of "Wales in his late 
visit to the Mosque of Omar, that the unaccountable 
green colour pervading the whole mosque is caused by 
painted tiles. The interior contains simply the railed- 
in summit of Mount Moriah — the bare rock on which 



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203 



the sacrifice of Abraham is alleged to have been pre- 
pared. The mosque is, in fact, nothing more than a 
vast permanent tent pitched over this sacred spot, on 
which no foot is allowed to tread, although the faithful 
are permitted to touch it with their hands through an 
opening left for the purpose. 

By-and-by, when our enemies had gone back to their 
devotions, we returned to the outside of the Temple, 
and visited the Jews' Weeping Place, under the wall 
where the fine large stones of Solomon's Temple still 
remain standing to a great height, and for a very con- 
siderable distance. Very fine stones they are, and hand- 
somely "rabbited" at the edges — though not nearly so 
large as others I afterwards saw in the walls of Baalbec. 
The remains of the great bridge, which once stretched 
across the ravine of Mount Zion, and connected the 
Temple with the Palace of the Kings of Judah, are still 
to be seen, and contain stones eighteen feet in length. 
Prom among them I gathered some of the " hyssop on 
the wall," growing now, even as when Solomon ended 
his " Circle of the Sciences," with the humble little herb. 

On another occasion I visited the Jew quarter of the 
town, which is no Ghetto, nor any way more sordid than 
the rest. The Jewish population has increased in a 
most astounding manner — nearly twentyfold — in the 
last half century. As there is no natural growth of 
population in Jerusalem— the air and habits of the people 
being so injurious to infant life that it is said two 
children alone survive out of every five who are born — 
this astonishing multiplication must of course result 
from immigration. I inquired from a gentleman resi- 



204 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



dent in Jerusalem, and likely to be peculiarly well- 
informed on the subject, whether such a phenomenon 
might be attributed to an increasing interest felt by the 
people generally in their national hopes of restoration. 
He believed it had no such origin, but that the rich and 
generous Jews of Europe habitually subscribing largely 
for "the poor Jews at Jerusalem," had led multitudes 
of the most worthless class to nock thither on the prin- 
ciple of the eagles and the carcass. No doubt the diffu- 
sion of information on the subject will soon direct the 
noble liberality of the English and German Jews in a 
better channel. Of course, beside these new comers, 
there is a body of Jews who have remained for ages in 
the city of their fathers, and who are deserving of all 
interest and respect. Some of them are, physically, 
very remarkable people — the Jewish type in a particu- 
larly fine development. One poor woman among them, 
to whom I spoke as she stood at her door holding her 
baby in her arms, might have made as sweet a Madonna 
as Eaphael ever painted. There was an indescribable 
mixture of innocence and dignity in her face. 

The Jews, at the time of my visit, were building a 
new synagogue, which promised to be large and lofty. 
The two old ones which I entered are singular erections. 
In the- centre of each there are great raised pews for the 
use of the officiating rabbin and choir. These pews, or 
pulpits, are of wood, all painted over, in. a somewhat 
Chinese style, with views of houses and trees, jarring 
curiously with our ideas of the ornaments of a religious 
edifice. In one of these synagogues it is said Elijah not 
long ago appeared, to the great consolation of his afflicted 



THE CITY 0E PEACE. 



205 



countrymen. Here also is a very singular vault, wherein 
are deposited all the worn-out leaves of sacred books, 
thus carefully preserved from desecration. At stated 
periods this charnel of books is opened, and the papers 
all taken out and carefully and religiously buried. 

After I had visited these and the other spots of chief 
interest in Jerusalem, I made a long excursion with the 
party of English and Americans with whom I had tra- 
velled from Jaffa, to Hebron, Bethlehem, Marsaba, the 
Dead Sea, Jordan, and so back to Jerusalem by Jericho, 
the Mountains of the Temptation, and Bethany. Part 
of this journey has been already narrated in a previous 
article— " A Day at the Dead Sea." Avery pleasant 
journey it was; and when my fellow-travellers on the 
last night of our sojourn together in tents, passed, 
among votes of mutual regrets and thanks, one especially 
concerning my "unvarying hilarity" during the trials 
of the wilderness, I could only reply I had found no 
trials among such great interests and with such kind 
and obliging companions. All things, however, must 
come to an end; and on our return to Jerusalem, I de- 
cided to leave the rest of the party to pursue the journey 
to Nazareth, while I returned alone to Jaffa. With 

the help of Dr. P , I soon found an excellent and 

trustworthy dragoman, the Piedmontese Giovanni B. 
Abengo, formerly an interpreter in the Prench army of 
Algiers. After one more day (this time on horseback) 
all round Jerusalem and up the Mount of Olives, and 
then one visit more to the Holy Sepulchre, I prepared 
for departure. My last dinner at the table-dlliote was 
somewhat troubled by the presence of a gentleman who 



206 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



had just ridden up from Jaffa. He averred that the 
accounts of the disturbed state of the country were true 
— that the great Arab chief, Aboo Goosh, was in the 
field with fifteen hundred followers, scouring the dis- 
trict, and seeking to attack another robber chief with 
about equal forces. There was no attempt to put the 
disturbance down, the Turkish government being utterly 
supine on such occasions. My informant himself — a 
good, hearty English sportsman — had been told he could 
not venture to come up to Jerusalem with a less guard 
than a khawass and five well-armed men, and, accord- 
ingly, he had ridden to the door of the hotel with that 
respectable s^'fe. Alas! for an " unprotected female/ ' 
who had not even a lady's-maid for the same journey ! 
I made up my mind, according to arguments nearly con- 
nected with my purse, that a khawass and five guards 
were superfluous luxuries, and that Icismet (destiny) 
must take care of me, with the help of Abengo and the 
muleteer. For the rest of the dinner I could enjoy the 
news of a change of ministry in England, and who had 
" got" this, and who was " out" of that, and how long 
"we" would stop " in" now we had entered on the 
glories of office. It was sufficiently confusing, amidst 
arrangements making all round the table for rides to 
the grave of Lazarus. 

A cold and drizzling dawn, and Abengo and the* 
muleteer looking wretched, and our horses in a state of 
deep dejection, shaking the rain from their ears, and 
protesting sensibly against the practice of early rising — 
such was my little cortege riding out of the Jaffa Gate 
of Jerusalem. Pausing on the summit of the hill, 



THE CITY OE PEACE. 



207 



whence the first and last views of Zion are obtained, T 
turned round, and gave a long, lingering gaze to the 
Holy City — the City of Peace, whence indeed hath 
come a " sword" into the world, and where discord has 
made its dwelling-place — yet, within whose walls the 
Religion of Peace had its fountain. 

As we pursued our way, we passed the site of the 
City of Colonia, and then the brook out of whose stones 
tradition asserts that David chose the pebble wherewith 
he slew Goliath. I begged Abengo to dismount and 
place one or two in the pockets of my saddle, in case we 
might meet with Aboo Goosh, who seems quite as ter- 
rible as a Philistine ; but my good dragoman looked 
rather dissatisfied at the suggestion. By-and-by, in a 
valley, which I believe is that of Emmaus, we came to 
the robber chief's own village, over which his castle 
frowns on a lofty eminence, precisely like those of the 
old Barons and Counts on the Rhine. Abengo, who 
had the honour of personal acquaintance with the great 
bandit, informed me that the whole system of life of 
such chiefs is purely feudal. He lives in a huge castle, 
inaccessible save to cannon, which of course could 
hardly be conveyed over the mountains, even if there 
were any government disposed to attempt the attack. 
" II Governo, Signora," said Abengo. " Dove sia il 
governo, qui?" Aboo Goosh' s territory includes some 
twenty square miles of half-cultivated land — quite a 
respectable kingdom compared to those of the little 
u Melks" of Joshua's time, who on an average had 
about se^en square miles of dominion apiece. When a 
great scheik like Aboo Goosh dies, the surviving male 



208 



THE CITIES 0E THE PAST. 



relative best qualified to sustain the power of the clan, 
succeeds to the chief dom. The personal wealth of the 
late scheik is, however, so far divided as to leave none 
of his sons quite impoverished. I suppose if any tri- 
fling treasure be needed to make up a young gentleman's 
suitable provision, the thing is arranged easily by 
stopping and robbing a traveller or two — or may be a 
caravan ! 

It was at this peaceful village I had been stoned so 
savagely on my way to Jerusalem, because I had not 
waited an interminable time for some messengers sent 
to fetch water for my sprained ankle, and the remaining 
society of the place supposed that I desired to defraud 
them of backsheesh. On my return, however, I passed 
through safely ; and by-and-by, with less fatigue than 
I expected, I found myself at the half-way tree between 
Jerusalem and Eamleh. Here there are always large 
parties of pilgrims and boys who fetch water for every- 
body and beast, and under the finest of the great olive 
trees an Arab holds a coffee and narghile shop. Seated 
on a mat on the ground, and drinking the horrid Eastern 
coffee in the usual little egg-cup, containing a spoonful 
of hot water at the top, and a spoonful of coffee bolus 
at the bottom, I turned a favourable ear to the advice of 
Abengo that I should seek restoration and consolation 
in a narghile. Very delicious it was — the first I had 
ever tasted — and in full spirits I mounted to go on 
through the more dangerous parts of our journey . Pre- 
sently we were in the long, narrow valley of Ajalon. 
The vegetation, which had been scanty higher up, was 
here rich and full. Dwarf ilexes were numerous, and 



THE CITY OE PEACE. 



209 



a shrub which, out of flower, resembled a rhododen- 
dron ; and myrtle, and the true Planta genista in abun- 
dance. Among the wild flowers I gathered one of the 
arum kind, as large as our pretty Kile lilies. But this 
flower of Ajalon, instead of the white rolling petal and 
yellow pistil, was completely black — the petal a purple 
black, the pistil a sooty black. Perhaps the flower may 
be well known to florists, but I never chanced to see it 
elsewhere, except in the great horticultural garden of 
Padua, where it is called the Arum Dracuncultis. It is 
certainly the Black Flower par eminence. Had it pleased 
the Creator of the world to make such gloomy flowers 
as this the ordinary blossoms of the ground, and not 
the most rare exceptions, it might not be so curious to 
see those who profess to be peculiarly religious habi- 
tually prefer sombre and ugly raiment and furniture, or 
consider that a black coat, or gown, or veil were peculiarly 
suitable for the expounders of God's lessons, or the 
imitators of his beneficence. 

"Where the bushes were thickest upon the hills of 
Ajalon, Abengo showed me a place where he had once 
seen a panther. Such animals, however, are extremely 
rare in Palestine : the jackals and hyenas, which we 
used to hear barking and roaring round our tents in the 
desert, are also rare in these more trodden paths. 

As we travelled on we passed, from time to time, 
many bands of armed men and companies of young lads 
going to join the war which was raging a few miles off. 
They did not trouble us ; but, of course, there was rea- 
son to have some apprehension, in case, by evil chance, 
either of the armies should cross our path, or perhaps 

p 



210 



THE CITIES 0E TEE PAST. 



some stampede carry us into the flood. One group passed 
close to my horse, carrying away from the battle a poor 
yonng man terribly wounded in the breast. We began 
to fear we were near the scene of struggle, and the 
men to whom Abengo spoke seemed to indicate that 
it was somewhere only a little to the south. 

Presently a most absurd cortege of a very different 
character met my eye. There was a khawass and a 
band of guards, and then came a poor mule picking his 
way through the steep and narrow path, laden with 
two great panniers, inevitably banging frequently against 
the rocks on either side. In one of these panniers was 
packed, not a sack of corn, but a fat and very cross- 
looking German countess, and in the opposite pannier 
her unhappy dame de compagnie, equally fat, and appa- 
rently equally miserable. Each of these ladies wore a 
very small and fashionable Prench bonnet set well back 
on the head, so that the Syrian sun, which by this time 
had dissipated ail fogs, , and was shining in noonday 
splendour, was pouring down on their defenceless heads, 
their hands being too much occupied with the panniers 
to permit of parasols. These two large, round, red faces 
looking so frightened and so cross, peering over those 
most undignified conveyances, were irresistibly ludi- 
crous. The sufferings of the unfortunate lady and her 
attendant, during the nine or ten hours of their journey 
to Jerusalem, must have been something frightful ; and 
what degree of " sleep" their feet must have endured 
at the bottom of their baskets it is hard to guess. I 
should certainly counsel any lady intending to visit Pa- 
lestine to acquire ; at least, the power of sitting on a side- 



THE CITY OF PEACE. 



211 



saddle before she leaves herself to such a resource. In 
the same party with the countess I met a very agreeable 
German gentleman, and also an Englishman I had known 
at Cairo, and who gave me news of the friends I had 
left in that city. One must have felt the solitude of 
these deserts, and have been riding alone, pondering on 
the "sun standing still and the moon staying,'' to 
know how curious it is to be hailed joyously by one's 
name by a friendly voice in the valley of Ajalon. 

" Now we have passed that tree," said Abengo, " we 
are out of Aboo Goosh's territory. This is the most 
dangerous part of the road for the next hour's march." 
The good fellow quietly took his carbine and placed it 
in front of his saddle, and, asking me to preserve silence, 
rode quietly in front. I followed him for a time at foot- 
pace, the path being too bad for swifter locomotion; 
and, of course, it was impossible not to look rather curi- 
ously at the larger bushes and trees and rocks on either 
hand, behind which it was probable some human pan- 
thers might be lurking for a spring. Why it was more 
dangerous here than in Aboo Goosh's territory it was 
not easy to discover, since close to that respected cate- 
ran's own village we were showed a tree, marking the 
spot where he himself had assisted at the process of 
relieving the proper officers of the tribute of Jerusalem 
which they were bearing to the Sultan; and many minor 
exploits were adduced to testify that such a proceeding 
was quite in the natural order of things for Aboo Goosh. 

No adventure occurred ; and after an hour or two the 
embargo on our tongues was taken off, and I could make 
Abengo proceed in his most curious narratives of sojourn- 

p 2 



212 



THE CITIES OF THE PAST. 



ings among wild tribes in Africa, and details of Syrian 
domestic life. 

After a good canter over the plain, we reached Ramleh 
by four o'clock, and I was welcomed heartily at the 
monastery by the good Franciscan lay-brother with 
whom I had fraternized on my former journey. I should 
have the best room all to myself (such a best room as it 
was!), and there was some Cyprus wine lately arrived, 
and he would kill a fowl directly, and I should have 
the best of salads, and might Abengo dine at my table ? 
and had I liked Jerusalem ? and — Cielo ! — had I 
bathed in the Mare Morto ? 

Before dawn next morning we were stirring again, 
and shaking hands with the kind young monk, on whom 
the bestowal of a little eau de Cologne for his headaches, 
and a moderate backsheesh, seemed to produce much 
pleasant surprise. As we rode out of the little town a 
very striking Eastern scene presented itself. A newly- 
built Moslem sepulchre was surmounted by two candles, 
faintly glimmering through the morning twilight, and 
thitherwards were wending slowly and mournfully four 
or five veiled women, literally " coming at break of day 
to the sepulchre to weep there. " I paused to watch 
them at a distance, and saw them station themselves 
round the tomb, and then commence the wild, sad cries 
which; as Abengo told me, contained recitals of all the 
benefits they had received from the deceased. It was 
an affecting scene — the lonely burial-ground, the cold, 
grey dawn, and the white-veiled women weeping, 
bending over the tomb, their wailing voices rising and 
falling in the utter stillness of daybreak. 



THE CITY OP PEACE. 



213 



After a time our path entered the plain of Sharon : 
the sun rose brightly over the wide expanse from 
Carmel on the north to Ashkelon on the south. "We 
galloped on for a few hours over the flowery fields 
where the tulip and the dwarf lily replaced the red 
anemones which had coloured whole roods of ground 
on my upward journey, and by and by we entered the 
delicious gardens around Jaffa, of almond and apricot 
and giant orange-trees as large and luxuriant as English 
laurels. The ship that was to carry me to Beyrouth was 
not yet visible when I reached Joppa ; so, after climbing 
up the dirty little streets of the steep conical hill on 
which the town is built, and depositing my goods with 
the Jew innkeeper, I had time to stroll down to the 
shore for a bath. A little way off are the low black 
rocks on which Pliny avers that Andromeda was chained 
ere Perseus came to her rescue — the iron staple by which 
she was fastened still remaining in his day — proof posi- 
tive of the veracity of the story, and the value of relics : 

. . . Dans son histoire 
Pline le dit. 11 faut le croire. 

I was soon swimming in the bright blue waves all 
round among these same rocks, and infinitely enjoyed 
my bath, but I cannot say I discovered any traces of the 
staple. "What a pretty legend it is ! a sort of foretaste 
of chivalry. Perseus might have belonged to a poem of 
Spenser or Tasso. The sea-monster is not so pleasing a 
personage. Some recent critics have surmised that he was 
related to the whale which threw up Jonah near the 
same spot, and also to poor unhappy old Dagon or 
Oannes the Pish : 

Thrice battered god of Palestine, 



214 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



who was worshipped hereabouts by the Philistines. A 
residue of the same Philistines must, I imagine, remain 
still in J oppa. There is a race observable quite different 
from the other inhabitants of Syria, with flatter and 
rounder faces, and straight, instead of hooked noses, 
also with magnificently broad and powerful shoulders. 
Goliath's town was only a day's journey away ! 

After my swim I was able to gather a good many 
pretty shells on the sands, a number of curious girls 
and women coming round and good-naturedly helping 
me to collect them — cones, and tellinas, and cowries, 
and, above all, the pilgrim's cockle-shell, which I was 
vain enough to place in my hat and wear for many a 
day afterwards, wishing that I might (like the Crusa- 
ders) augment therewith my coat of arms. 

Returning to the hotel I received a whole package of 
letters, recommended the excellent Abengo to a party of 
American travellers, and after lunch climbed up to the 
roof of the house to watch for the arrival of the steamer. 
I knew the way well, for my bedroom, on my first visit, 
had been under the ladder to this roof, and I had found 
great interest in mounting to it the first thing in the 
morning. A strange bedroom it was for a " lady's 
bower," a chamber with no furniture whatsoever, except 
a dreadful bed of hard cotton, overhung by a row of 
pistols 'and tobacco-bags belonging to the rightful pro- 
prietor, the Jew master of the hotel. In one corner 
there was a huge deal box serving the purpose of toilet- 
table and washing-stand ; but such a luxury could not 
be long spared to a too-favoured dame. At three next 
morning I was awakened from such slumbers as my 
hard couch and two unglazed windows, of a cold night, 



THE CITY OF PEACE. 



215 



permitted, to allow this box to be taken away to Jeru- 
salem ! In the morning I found a small tin case nailed to 
the door-post, and on opening it discovered a slip of parch- 
ment, a true Phylactery, covered with Hebrew charac- 
ters, which a scholar in the party translated as a prayer. 

Passing by my old quarters on my second visit I 
went at once out upon the roof of the house. These 
"house-tops" of Syria are fitly suited for the solitary 
devotions to which they are commonly dedicated. They 
occupy the whole surface of the house below, the in- 
equalities of the arched chambers being filled up, and 
a level space left open, round which runs a parapet 
four or five feet high, pierced with holes formed by 
the cylindrical -shaped bricks of which they are built. 
These holes admit a continual current of air, and, being 
arranged in pretty Eastern patterns, have a quaint and 
pleasing effect. Sitting on the mats left usually on these 
roofs, the solitude on any of the more elevated houses 
is quite complete, and such as we never obtain in the 
open air in our towns. The Tanner's House at Joppa, 
still existing, was of this kind, and a more suitable 
place for a solitary vision could not be conceived. A 
hundred yards or so distant from it was the roof on 
which I now stood to take my last look at Palestine. 
On the one side was the bright blue Levant breaking 
upon the rocks. The fresh smell of the sea- wind, redo- 
lent of home memories, came to me from the shore, with 
the soft sound of the waters kissing the long reach of 
yellow sands stretching far as the eye could reach to 
Askalon and Gaza. Inland, beyond the little walled 
knoll of Joppa, came first the rich green orange-gardens, 
among which I could discern a lake, and a palm-tree 



216 



THE CITIES OE THE PAST. 



hanging over it, so rich and dreamy in colouring it 
seemed hardly real. Then came the olive-woods, and 
the fig-trees, and the masses of pink and white almond 
and apricot blossoms among them ; and, then, beyond, 
the plain of Sharon and the wild mountains of Judaea 
stretching far away up to Carmel on the northern shore. 
It was a beautiful land, worthy, as I thought, to be 
the Holy Land — the land from whose flowery vales the 
soul of man had so early soared up to God — the land 
whereon His Spirit had so often descended to illumine 
the hearts of prophet and apostle. Is not each spot, 
where a man's soul has climbed the angel's ladder of 
true prayer, "the house of God and gate of heaven"? Is 
not every country where the good have lived, the wise 
spoken, and the devoted died, a Holy Land for evermore? 
"What is, then, that Syrian earth where first breathed 
David's psalms, and burst Isaiah's prophecy, and on 
whose vales and hills closed the dying eyes of Christ ? 

I could not but be thankful that I had trodden those 
flowery plains, and climbed those rocky hills, and 
crossed that desolate wilderness of the Dead Sea shore, 
and stood under the olive-trees of Gethsemane. It was 
a great thing in a lifetime to have been able to do so ; 
and as I saw on the far southern horizon the faint clou 
of smoke which warned me my hours in Palestine wer 
numbered, I looked once more from the housetop ove 
garden and plain and wild Judam hills, and thanke 
God I had seen the Holy Land ! 



William Stevens, Printer, 37, Bell Yard, Temple Bar. 



